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Book Reviews

Discover the insights and opinions of readers like you, where diverse perspectives illuminate the literary landscapes of the titles we hold dear.

Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Urbanism, Social Complexity, and Change

Edited by Adrian S.Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase, and Diane Z. Chase

One of the most important and difficult things for archaeologists is to determine the population of ancient sites or regions. Accurate population data is critical to an understanding of the culture and the forces driving it. New technology and important advances in archaeology are making this difficult job more accurate all the time.

In this volume covering much of the forested lowlands and arid highlands of the Maya region and central Mexico, 25 distinguished scholars offer 13 essays on the population of the region. They offer a view of ancient landscapes that has only become possible in recent years. New field techniques tell part of the story, but even more important are new technologies. The most important is LiDAR (light detection and ranging) which uses laser pulses to create a three dimensional map on the ground. LiDAR can see through thick forest and is thus of particular importance in the heavily wooded Maya lowlands.  The maps are uncannily accurate—with resolution of 1 centimeter or less. Armed with this new data, archaeologists can count houses, palaces, and other structures, leading to much-improved population estimates. This new data has resolved the old debate as to whether Mesoamericans had true cities (they did) and the extent of their urbanization. Very accurate maps of sites and regions give archaeologists accurate counts of= structures. Improved field techniques have allowed archaeologists to determine family size, that is how many people occupied a house, compound, or palace. 

This volume presents the latest information of these and other techniques archaeologists are using to crack the population dilemma. It is a critical addition to Mesoamerican literature that helps us to better understand one of the most perplexing problems of Mesoamerican archaeology.

—Mark Michel, TAC President Emeritus

University of Arizona Press, 2024; 432 pgs., illus., $80 cloth or ebook; uapress.arizona.edu

Current Perspectives on Stemmed and Fluted Technologies in the American Far West

Edited by Katelyn N. McDonough, Richard L. Rosencrance, and Jordan E. Pratt

For over 100 years the earliest-dated spear points have been found and studied by archaeologists across the Americas. Some are characterized as having a fluted base (Clovis) and others a stemmed base (Western Stemmed Tradition). Throughout this time, a scholarly debate has grown as to what the relationship between fluted and stemmed points may be. Are they contemporaneous? Geographically separate? Do they represent separate cultures and lifeways? It has been a long-held assumption that the makers of Clovis points appeared first on the continent, but findings during recent excavations in the Far West are challenging the paradigm regarding what we thought we knew about the peopling of the Americas. 

This volume is broken into four parts. The first and second parts review the current understandings of the technologies of stemmed and fluted points, the third considers the regional interactions between the two, and the fourth takes the previous arguments and provides a synopsis as to how far fluted and stemmed point studies have come, and where they need to go.

Inspired by a collection of papers given at the 2019 Society for American Archaeology meeting, it does not pretend to unequivocally answer the above questions. Instead, it is a peer-reviewed discussion on the history of the debate, while also presenting the current views of the country’s top archaeologists studying the late Pleistocene. They do not all agree. Despite this, long-held ideas are evaluated, reconsidered, and a road to more productive research that moves beyond stone tools is mapped and includes the earliest American diets, environmental reconstructions, genetics, and movement across the landscape.

Included in this publication are illustrations and photographs of these ancient fluted and stemmed points, as well as a compilation of tables and figures using the latest archaeological data to be found on the topic of Pleistocene sites and artifacts. That, in conjunction with the inclusion of Clovis/Western Stemmed Tradition academic histories, will make an expert out of anyone who endeavors to read it. As such, it will be the reference to be cited in any upcoming papers and publications into the future.

—Linsie Lafayette, TAC Western Field Representative

University of Utah Press, 2024; 369 pgs., illus., $80 hardback; uofupress.com/ 

Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America

Edited by Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas

The foreword discusses Native American worldviews as critical in understanding the relationship between the living world and nonliving stone architecture dotting the landscape, a concept demonstrated throughout the book’s 14 chapters. Three chapters are written from a Native American perspective, six are from the viewpoint of archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians, and five chapters explore specific Ceremonial Stone Landscape (CSL) sites in eastern North America. 

This text successfully addresses problems frequently encountered during ceremonial stone site research such as origin, function, and—most perplexing—whether stone structures sites were constructed historically by Euro-Americans as part of their secular land clearing and agrarian activities or by Native Americans as visual sacred stone monuments and conduits intertwined with the spiritual world.

Editors Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas aptly describe the book as an introduction to Indigenous ceremonial landscapes enabling readers to recognize the significant cultural importance of 17th- to 20th-century CSLs and to highlight the need to preserve and protect these cultural resources. The introduction briefly covers the interesting history of the 33 United South and Eastern Tribes and the 2008 identification of the Turner Falls Airport Site, the first CSL recognized by the federal government and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lavin and Thomas touch on the use of modern technology, such as the Geographic Information System and optically stimulated luminescence dating technology to better understand these sites, as well as tips to identify CSL sites.

Our Hidden Landscape: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America is written by an eclectic group of knowledgeable authors who provide diverse perspectives on these sacred stone structures. Though generally focused on sites in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, it is applicable to CSLs throughout North America, and will undoubtedly become a go-to reference source for anyone interested in future CSL research.

—Harry Holstein, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Jacksonville State University

University of Arizona Press, 2023; 384 pages, illus., $75 hardback or ebook; uapress.arizona.edu

Written on the Landscape: Mysteries Beyond Chaco Canyon

Directed and produced by Anna Sofaer

This ethereal and educational film asks us to ponder the questions: Where did the Chaco people come from? How did so many people get integrated into one system? And 300 years later, where did they go and why? The documentary takes viewers through the intricacies of long-standing mysteries that surround Chaco Canyon, and discusses how knowledge of astronomy and the sacred were interwoven with its architecture. It is the third film in a trilogy about Chaco Canyon (The Sun Dagger and The Mystery of Chaco Canyon) by Anna Sofaer, an American researcher who studies the archaeoastronomy of ancient cultures, particularly Ancestral Puebloan cultures of the Southwest. 

In the film, Sofaer describes her first visit to Chaco in 1977 as a moment she didn’t know her life was about to change. She visited at summer solstice and rediscovered the Sun Dagger site near the summit of Fajada Butte, then proceeded to spend three decades studying Chaco. Through the nonprofit Solstice Project, Sofaer coordinated interdisciplinary teams of professionals—from archaeologists and astronomers to architects, animators, and remote sensing experts—to explore theories about the site. 

“We still don’t know the whole story, because of the immense complexity of Chaco and because it challenges us on so many levels of our own thinking—our cultural biases perhaps, still. Even more so, it challenges us to think in many dimensions,” Sofaer explains in the film. “And there’s the other feeling that in the end, they were completing something and they were not abandoning. They were carefully sealing—a very intentional closing of the buildings.”

Aerial imagery, surveys, and LiDAR results are highlighted to expand our understanding of the architecture, terrain, and “roads” of this ritual complex with deep ties to Mesoamerica. Its stunning imagery combined with flawless narration and insightful commentary from Puebloan descendants creates an experience that leaves viewers wondering about the history of the site, yet peculiarly satisfied that we are ever-so-closer to deciphering aspects of the culture that have long remained an enigma.

—Tracy Loe, Editor

Bullfrog Films, 58 minutes, 2024, presented by Solstice Project, bullfrogfilms.com

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