Archaeology in the Lowland American Tropics: Current Analytical Methods and Applications

Archaeology in the Lowland American Tropics: Current Analytical Methods and Applications
Peter W. Stahl | 2006-11-02 00:00:00 | Cambridge University Press | 332 | Native American
The lowland American tropics have posed great challenges for archaeologists. Working in awkward terrain, in humid conditions where preservation is difficult, modern scholars pioneered new methods that increasingly influence archaeological practice internationally. The contributors to this volume all have substantial experience in the region. Their essays explore problems including site discovery, excavation, the preservation of artifacts, and methods of analysis. This book will be welcomed by all archaeologists, ecologists and paleontologists working in the tropics.
Reviews
The collapse of the Clovis paradigm has meant, among a great deal of other things,a re-evaluation of lowland tropical American archaeology. This is an invaluable and comprehensive guide to the field, which provides judicious analysis of recent research as well as very useful intellectual histories of debates. The very extensive bibliography is especially useful. My own interests are in the environmental history of the Amazon, and I found the chapters by Erickson, Bray, Pearsall and Piperno especially helpful. My only criticism is one of omission: I think a contextualising chapter putting the developments in lowland South American archaeology in a wider continental and hemispheric context would have been useful, especially since one of the most interesting implications of recent developments elsewhere is not the uniqueness of the lowlands, but the parallels between the South American lowlands and similar environments elsewhere in the Americas, such as the mound complexes and drained fields of the Mississippi valley. Nevertheless, a fitting and appropriate memorial to Donald Lathrap. David Cleary Harvard University

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