Reviews

Hopi Oral Tradition and the Archaeology of Identity

By Wesley Bernardini (University of Arizona Press,2005; 256 pgs.,ills.,$45 cloth; www.uapress.arizona.edu)

The 14th century A.D.was perhaps the most dynamic of any for the Puebloan people of the American Southwest. In 1300, the Four Corners area had been abandoned and Puebloan people lived in at least 16 separate locales west of the Rio Grande Valley. One hundred years later they had coalesced into only three—the same three that remain today—Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma pueblos. Through a century of unprecedented population movement these prehistoric groups evolved into the tribes of today.

Archaeologist Wesley Bernardini turns to Hopi oral tradition to help trace the movements of these people, and traditional archaeological techniques to confirm site locales. Hopi history is really a history of each of its clans that traces movements from village to village until arriving at the Hopi Mesas in northeastern Arizona. Archaeologists are turning more and more to native traditional knowledge to assist their research. In this volume Bernardini demonstrates how many sources of information can come together to give us a much clearer picture of what happened many centuries ago. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

By Jared Diamond (Viking,2005; 575 pgs., illus.,$30 cloth; www.penguin.com)

The rise and fall of cultures and civilizations is a central theme of archaeology throughout the world. Collapse is the sequel to

Jared Diamond’s best-selling and

Pulitzer Prizewinning Guns, Germs, and Steel, which tackled the difficult question of how and why some cultures developed faster than others. More specifically it tries to explain why European civilization developed technologies and immunities and allowed them to dominate the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.

A professor of geography at UCLA, Diamond draws heavily on archaeological research to tackle the corollary question of why some cultures fail, but others do not. Taken together the two books examine some of the most fundamental questions of human development in ways that are both original and challenging. Diamond is primarily an environmental determinist who looks closely at the most fundamental elements of human existence—food and fuel. This work is limited to those collapses with a significant environmental dynamic, though he freely admits that factors other than the environment can lead to collapse, as in the case of the Soviet Union.

In Collapse, as in Guns, Diamond examines case studies to draw universal conclusions, and two of his case studies are of particular interest to American archaeologists: the Maya and Chaco Canyon. Easter Island and Greenland are closely related. Diamond narrows the cause of cultural collapse to five reasons— environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trading partners, and society’s response to environmental problems. More than one of these central causes is often a factor, and collapse can come very quickly—even near the peak of development. Diamond finds that each society’s political, social, and economic institutions determine what response, if any, is made to these problems.

It would be easy to criticize this study as simplistic, but that would be unfair. In both Collapse and Guns Diamond challenges the reader to examine fundamental questions of human development that lead to fundamental truths that may be general, but make the point nonetheless.

The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost, Paradigm Gained

By A.Martin Byers (University of Akron Press,2004; 674 pgs.,illus.,$60 cloth; www.uakron.edu/uapress)

When Europeans first entered the Ohio Valley, they discovered numerous large earthen structures—mounds (often containing burials), timber constructions that were ritually destroyed and covered with earth, and embankment earthworks usually in geometric shapes. For the next 200 years these earthworks mystified and challenged archaeologists, who are still unsure of their function and meaning. Much studied in the 19th and early 20th centuries, serious research diminished after 1930. Only since the 1970s has a new generation of archaeologists tackled the perplexing questions of the Ohio Hopewell. The culture is named after Captain M. C. Hopewell, whose farm contained the largest and richest of the earthwork complexes. It was purchased and preserved by The Archaeological Conservancy in 1980 and is now part of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park near Chillicothe, Ohio.

A. Martin Byers, an archaeologist at McGill University, has produced the first book-length study of the Ohio Hopewell in a generation, focusing on the mounds and earthworks that are the central features of the culture. Byers’s thorough analysis of the earthworks leads him to embrace the theory that they were part of a world renewal ritual known as the Sacred Earth principle. Geometric shapes were the unique expression of the Ohio Hopewell. Their elaborate mortuary practices were a form of sacrificial renewal of the cosmos.

Byers’s views are original and controversial, but they are well documented and convincingly argued. This volume is certain to stimulate more interest and more research on one of North America’s most fascinating ancient cultures. It is long overdue. —Mark Michel

Reviews

Touring Gotham’s Archaeological Past: 8 Self-Guided Walking Tours through New York City

By Diana diZerega Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell (Yale University Press, 2004; 200 pgs.,illus. $18 paper; www.yalebooks.com)

Humans have lived in America’s biggest city for at least 11,000 years—Native Americans, Dutch settlers, African slaves, and people from most every country in the world. They all left their mark on the city in the form of a rich archaeological record. Fresh from the success of their earlier book, Unearthing Gotham, archaeologists Diana Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell decided to share this rich legacy with the world.

The eight walking tours fit nicely into a pocket guide that will take you to a side of the Big Apple seen by only a lucky few. You will learn of 1,000-year-old trading routes, sacred burial grounds, and 17thcentury villages. From Wall Street to the Statue of Liberty, Queens, and Brooklyn, you will learn about the lives of colonial farmers and merchants, Revolutionary War soldiers, and 19th-century hotelkeepers. The guide takes us to 87 archaeological sites throughout the city. Each of the eight walking tours covers a different part of the city with different archaeological themes.

The authors say they had lots of fun putting this book together. People who use it will have a lot of fun, too, while discovering New York’s rich archaeological past.