BOOK REVIEWS / Archaeology 915

Mithen that such objects presuppose complex social systems toacquire the meanings without which they would not exist, andthat they are prime examples of symbolic expression? Wouldthe technologies of underground mining that predate the UpperPaleolithic or Late Stone Age at many sites have been possible inthe absence of human ingenuity? Beads lack any function with-out strings, and ocean-going watercraft cannot be built withoutcoidage. Come to think of it, how would hominids make use ofstrings or ropes if not through the use of knots? If these Lowerand Middle Paleolithic mariners and wearers of beads possessedno creativity, no behavioral flexibility, as Mithen proclaims,how did they achieve their many colonizations? And if paleoartbegan with the Aurignacian of France, how do we account forthe Acheulian petroglyphs of India, the many thousands of"Middle Paleolithic" petroglyphs of Australia, or the MiddleStone Age ostrich eggshell engravings of southern Africa? Todisregard most of the relevant evidence in a discussion of homi-nidcreativity is inexcusable.

Fortunately this book also comprises Byrne's work concern-ing apes and monkeys, which as always is a pleasure to read,with its terminological precision and its arguments safely an-chored to some null hypothesis. There is Boden's fascinatingand eloquent exploration of the very concept of creativity.StevenL. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner find that "the Mousterian ac-tually shows considerable diversity," perhaps even more thanthe Upper Paleolithic (p. 147); and they succeed in demonstrat-ing that Mousterian people adapted to rapidly changing condi-tions in great "tactical flexibility." Other useful contributionsappreciated by this reviewer are some solid Australian ethnog-raphy from Robert Layton and four papers about HoloceneEurope, which confirm essentially that human cognition by theend of the Pleistocene was no different from today's. •>

Great Towns and Regional Polities in the PrehistoricAmerican Southwest and Southeast. Jill E. Neitzel, ed. Al-buquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. 325 pp.

JUDITH A. HABICHT MAUCHEUniversity of California-Santa Cruz

During the 1980s, a series of heated, and sometimes acrimo-nious, debates emerged, among archaeologists working in boththe Southwest and Southeast, over the nature and complexity ofprecontact sociopolitical formations in each of these regions ofNorth America. Debates in both areas grew out of broader theo-retical and empirical developments in Americanist archaeologybut were carried out largely in isolation from one another.Growing recognition of the tremendous impact of Euro-Ameri-can diseases, colonization, and socioeconomic marginalizationon the native peoples of North America forced researchers, inboth areas, to deal with the potential biases inherent in the directhistorical approach and ethnographic analogies when recon-structing precontact social systems. In addition, Southwesternand Southeastern archaeologists were increasingly frustratedwith the inability of typological and neoevolutionary models toexplain the apparent multiplicity of moderate scale sociopoliti-cal formations that flourished on the North American continentprior to European conquest—formations that seemed inade-

quately glossed by the normative concepts of "chiefdom" and"tribe."

Despite the fact that researchers in both areas were grapplingwith similar problems, new models of sociopolitical develop-ment were formulated and debated from rather parochial and re-gionally focused perspectives that inhibited comparative analy-ses at a broader, continental scale. As Neitzel points out in theintroduction to Great Towns and Regional Polities, one of theprimary factors limiting comparative studies is the varying con-ceptual usages of certain terminology both within and betweenthe two regions. "Can big sites in the two areas legitimately becalled towns? What are communities? What are polities? Canlate prehistoric societies in the Southwest and Southeast becalled chiefdoms? If not, what should they be called?" (p. xxii).The papers presented in this volume represent an attempt, by agroup of Southwestern and Southeastern archaeologists, tobridge this conceptual gap and to begin a dialogue that eventu-ally may lead to a greater understanding of the complexity anddiversity of precolonial middle range societies from a morebroadly comparative and cross-cultural perspective.

Great Towns and Regional Polities grew out of a conferencesymposium and subsequent week-long seminar, both held in theearly 1990s. The focus of these meetings, and the resulting pub-lication, was a comparative examination of late prehistoric(A.D. 900-1550) sociopolitical organization in the AmericanSouthwest and Southeast, as viewed from varying scales ofanalysis. These scales include "the big site, the polity, themacroregion, and the world system" (p. xviii). The volume is or-ganized into a series of paired chapters: one dealing with theSouthwest, the other with the Southeast. Each pair of chaptersfocuses on a specific analytical scale and is followed by a briefcomparative summary of both regions from that perspective.The volume concludes with two chapters that attempt to placethe Southwestern and Southeastern discussions within an evenlarger global context. The book is handsomely published in alarge format. It includes numerous high-quality figures, includ-ing maps, site plans, data analysis diagrams, and comparative ta-bles and charts. It would be an excellent addition to the library ofany Southwestern and Southeastern scholar, as well as theoristsinterested in comparative sociopolitical development, espe-cially among non-state or early state societies.

In reading the various chapters in this volume, I was struckimmediately by the relative cultural and organizational diver-sity that characterized native Southwestern societies at all levelsof analysis. In contrast, the Southeast appears as a relatively ho-mogeneous region, dominated by a single archaeological tradi-tion, the Mississippian, throughout the late prehistoric period.This contrast is particularly evident in the chapters by Lekson,Holley, and Holley and Lekson, which examine the structureand distribution of "big sites" or " towns" in both regions. WhileI was not entirely convinced by Lekson1 s use of the term "greattown" to describe the wide variety of "big sites" that dominatedthe Southwestern landscape during late prehistory, I found hiscomparative illustration of siteplans, all drawn to the same scale(pp. 10-11 fig. 1.5), to be extremely interesting and informa-tive—especially since it clearly demonstrates that six ofChaco's great houses would have fit easily within the centralmound precinct at Snaketown! Similarly, thepaired drawings of"Downtown Chaco" (p. 40 fig. 3.1) and "Downtown Cahokia"(p. 41 fig. 3.2) in Holley and Lekson's comparative synthesis

916 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 102, No. 4 • DECEMBER 2000

graphically illustrate the common features of site planning andmonumentality that characterized the two largest sociopoliticalcenters in ancient North America.

The notion of "polity" in the prehistoric Southwest is poorlydefined conceptually and empirically vague on the ground. Thisproblem is thrown into high relief when compared to the situ-ation in the Southeast where polities are clearly recognized inthe form of hierarchical groupings of mound-plaza complexesand their associated hinterlands. As Fish and Scarry (p. 76) pointout, "One of the most portentous contrasts between the South-east and Southwest is the absence of similar uniformity in thecomponents and layout of Southwestern centers, and by infer-ence, in the organizational and integrative rationales of theirpolities." Southwestern civil-ceremonial constructions, whichinclude mounds, ballcourts, great kivas, great houses, and pla-zas, vary greatly across both time and space. In addition, the lackof elaboration in mortuary complexes in the Southwest suggeststhat, unlike Mississippian society, ancestor veneration and sym-bolic projections of kinship were not central to polity cohesion(Fish and Scarry: p. 77).

The intraregional variability and interregional contrasts out-lined by the various authors in this volume demonstrate the em-pirical and interpretive inadequacy of trying to understandsociopolitical formations in the Southwest and Southeast withinthe normative frameworks of "tribe," "chiefdom," or even"middle range society." As Muller and Wilcox note:

The structure of political discourse in the East—certainly in historictimes—reveals competitive, even warlike, relations among the vari-ous levels of political power. . .. The paradox of politics and powerin the East lies in the dynamic balance between public affairs andprivate glory. . . .In contrast, chiefs are hard to identify in the South-west. . . . The flaunting of private glory was not the Southwesternmode of political action. To the contrary, corporate structures seemmuch more evident empirically. . .. Even so, increasingly complexstructures of political and economic organization were constructed,and archaeologists are just beginning to understand their workings,[p. 160]

Those of us who struggle to understand the nature of commu-nity formation, intraregional alliance, and interregional interac-tion among the native peoples of North America on the eve ofEuropean colonization certainly have our work cut out for us.However, the empirical foundation and comparative frame-work summarized in Great Towns and Regional Polities cer-tainly provide us with an excellent place to start. •>

The Prehistory of Missouri. Michael J. O 'Brien and W. Ray-mond Wood. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.418 pp.

WILLIAM GREEN

University of Iowa

Every state or region ought to have a summary of its prehis-tory. Missouri has several, of which this volume is the mostrecent.

This is an unusual state archaeological summary because ofits extended and explicit considerations of systematics and itsunwillingness to stray far beyond the "facts" of the artifactual

and paleoenvironmental records. The authors eschew interpre-tation, particularly in the ideological, religious, and ritualrealms of ancient cultures. They equate interpretation with un-scientific storytelling, whereas a scientific archaeology wouldoffer explanations, not interpretations.

Most midwestern archaeologists are wedded to the use oftypes and phases as taxa that help organize the data of prehis-tory. Consistent with this volume's up-front consideration ofsystematics, the authors often group artifacts into types but as-siduously avoid applying the phase names that other archaeolo-gists use for many prehistoric manifestations in Missouri. Thereason is their belief that essentialism, in which "entities are as-sumed to exist as bounded phenomena" (p. 359), obscures ratherthan promotes an understanding of prehistory. They believe thatthe application of taxa such as types and phases can feed essen-tialist thinking. They do recognize the usefulness of types as"shorthand notations that quickly convey information about anobject" (p. 360). In fact, they "can't imagine an archaeology thatdidn't somehow employ types" (p. 360). However, they do notview point and pottery types as "real"; only the objects are real.Prehistorians modify the type criteria as needed. Phase criteriaare even more poorly defined than types. Phases, too, can be"useful as shorthand devices, as long as we do not begin to seethem for something they are not, such as 'explanatory' con-structs" (p. 277). But phases are not real things or even theoreti-cal units. In the authors' view, phases in Missouri are "a mish-mash of internally inconsistent constructs of questionableutility" (p. 363).

Archaeologists need such reminders to avoid falling into es-sentialist dilemmas (e.g., "this site can't belong to thatphase be-cause it's in the wrong valley"), so these detailed discussions ofsystematics are useful even if unusual for a state archaeologicalsummary. Yet the strain will always exist between the archae-ologist's left brain, which recognizes phases are not ethnicgroups, and the right brain, which wants to attribute some degreeof humanity or at least social reality to the archaeological record.

According to the authors, the way to avoid essentialist think-ing is to apply a materialist viewpoint. "Under a materialistview, explanation is tied intricately to observed variation; infer-ences are made about the nature of change only after variationhas been identified and measured" (p. 360; emphasis in origi-nal). This volume therefore emphasizes measuring technologi-cal variation, especially in projectile point and pottery manu-facture and use, which the authors view as the first step inunderstanding and explaining the archaeological record. In theprocess of describing variation, the authors attempt to explainsome of the observed changes in projectile and pottery technolo-gies, while also offering a few plausible interpretations of settle-ment systems, subsistence patterns, and interaction networks.

Missouri, an average-sized state positioned at the juncture ofseveral resource-rich environmental zones, has a notably robustand diverse archaeological record. The authors note that theycould not cover all topics and regions in depth and so had tofocus and limit their discussion. By deciding to emphasizetechnology in accord with their materialist framework, theyhave done a good job of describing artifact and settlementforms and the variation in these forms through time andacross the state. Many aspects of Missouri archaeology are notcovered; some are receiving their own book-length treatments