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and naturalists. Scenic beauty and wildlife habitats were now fully recognized as an integral part of Britain’s heritage, in the same way as buildings and monuments had been much earlier.

Much of the material used in this carefully researched book is new. Its interpretation illuminates key issues which stimulated the resolution of the more complex issues which were to face rural post-war Britain. That tangible achievements during the inter-war period were limited is probably not so much another example of the missed opportunities of the 193Os, as a reflection of the complexity of the problems which were being addressed for the first time. Sheail’s book admirably demonstrates that complexity, and sets it against the economic and political conditions and social values of the time. Without doubt the hesitant steps taken in the inter-war years were crucial to the determined atti- tudes which emerged at the end of the Second War, and which led by 1950 to major legislation in planning and countryside matters. Let us hope that, whatever the outcome of the current debate about the need for firm interventionist policies in countryside matters, John Sheail will be persuaded to write a sequel to this book dealing with rural conservation in the post-war period.

Nature Conservancy Council, Norwich J. P. MORLEY

The Americas

GEORGE F. CARTER, Earlier Than You Think. A Personal View of Man in America (College Station: Texas A. and M. University Press, 1981. Pp. xivf348. $19.95)

This challenging and controversial book is the testimony of the author’s long-lasting battle against the prevailing ideas on the antiquity of man in the New World. Specifically, Carter deplores and attacks the straightjacket thinking that has shackled American archaeologists, most of whom still subscribe to the viewpoint that man is a relative newcomer to the New World. Whereas Carter maintains that man was here 100,000 years ago, most American archaeologists argue for a time span of no more than 30,000 years.

As the narrative unfolds, and the author probes the palaeolithic dawn of American prehistory, the reader is led over a cultural landscape littered with crude stone tools, each a mute reminder of ancient humans who vanished long before the Clovis and Folsom hunters of the Palaeo-Indian period some 12,000 years ago. The crux of Carter’s argu- ment hinges of course on the authenticity and interpretation of these “tools”. Not only is this topic still hotly disputed, but conflicting views over time-scales also elicit strong emotional reactions. For this reason, therefore, the author devotes one chapter of the book to the methodology of dating, and to the establishment of a geomorphic framework involving ice-age chronology, climatic change, and sea-level variations. Such a frame of reference is essential for understanding man’s migration from the Old World to the New via the Bering land bridge.

Another chapter, aptly entitled ‘Mankind on the Rock Pile’, presents a graphic view of the tool industry which may have begun with Homo habilis in Africa almost two million years ago. Here the author illustrates the technology of tool making and describes the various products of early man’s handiwork: adzes, metates, cleavers, scrapers and the like, leading eventually to the fluted projectile points of the Clovis and Folsom hunters. The discussion also emphasizes the subtle differences between artifacts and naturifacts (geofacts), and due consideration is given to a special category known as “cartifacts”- tools that are the figment of Carter’s imagination, at least in the opinion of his ad- versaries! It seems that the interpretation of artifacts often sets prehistorian against prehistorian, and creates warring camps “with anger and contempt boiling in the scholarly journals”.

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With some of the subtleties of artifacts out of the way, and the associated folklore and numerology placed in proper (as Carter sees it) perspective, the author moves on to examine a number of key sites in American prehistory, beginning with those of the San Diego region with which he is the most familiar. The evidence for Interglacial Man, whom Carter believes inhabited the Californian coast about 100,000 years ago (American Lower Palaeolithic), is found in the guise of primitive scrapers and cleavers recovered from the Texas Street site. These early inhabitants were followed by San Dieguito and La Jollan peoples-hunters and foragers respectively-who lived on the coast during the Middle Palaeolithic about 60,000 years ago. A good case for great antiquity is also made for a number of other sites, including the Calico, East Rim and Yuha Desert.

The next step in the unravelling of the saga of the first Americans takes the reader to the Bering Strait, the generally acknowledged route by which man emigrated from the Old World to the New. Geological evidence demonstrates that a lowering of sea-level during an ice age would expose the extensive landmass of Beringia linking Siberia and Alaska. In examining the environmental setting for man’s journey across the bridge, Carter considers a wealth of scientific data ranging from tectonism and animal migrations to physiological climatology. He concludes that Beringia may have been no colder then than it is today; indeed, the Tierra de1 Fuegians of South America may provide a modern- day analogue for survival in such an unrelenting environment. But who were these humans who unknowingly crossed the threshold from the Old World to the New- H. erectus, H. sapiens neandertalensis or H. sapiens? There are no specific answers, only speculations, but it is known that Peking Man (H. erectus) occupied northern China some 350,000 years ago. Circumstantial evidence, per se, probably favours an early crossing.

Professor Carter-geographer, archaeologist, respected scientist and outspoken critic- is a product of the Carl Sauer school of geographic thought. Earlier Than You Think is his personal and retrospective inquiry into the “how, when, where and why” of early man in the Americas. His nicely illustrated book is cast in the same fascinating mould as Johanson and Edey’s Lucy, and it is written in a lively anecdotal style, readily digestible even by the layman. Carter’s professional antagonists may “see red” as some of their cherished beliefs are unceremoniously dissected under his scalpel. The reviewer, however, with his own experiences in eastern Beringia, is sympathetic to Carter’s viewpoint. There is growing evidence that man, the intrepid wanderer, made his debut in America as early as the Illinoian ice age, and at least 150,000 years ago. It is indeed much “earlier than you think’.

University of Toronto ALAN V. JOPLING

GEORGE PIERRE CASTILE and GILBERT KUSHNER (Eds), Persistent Peoples: Cultural En- claves in Perspective (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981. Pp. xxii+274. $24.00 and $1050 softback)

The introduction to this volume reveals what the title conceals: it is a Festschrzjl. The person honoured, Edward H. Spicer, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the Uni- versity of Arizona, is best known for his work on the Yaqui and other Indian groups that have been exposed to prolonged Hispanic and American influence but have managed nevertheless to retain essential features of their cultures. The concept of “enclavement”, which figures prominently in Spicer’s work, serves as the orienting theme or at least as an inspiration for the essays offered here by friends and former students.

Given the academic paternity and Southwestern perspective of the book’s 13 contri- butors it is not surprising that most of their essays deal with native North Americans. Chapters are devoted to ‘Enclavement in Colonial Central Mexico’, ‘The Persistent Identity of the Mohave Indians’, ‘ Cherokee Curing and Conjuring’, ‘The Dramatization