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discover, and share... We re using Facebook to give you reading recommendations based on what your friend s are sharing and the things you like. We've also made it easy to connect with y our friends: you are now following your Facebook friends who are on Scribd, and they are following you! In the future you can access your account using your Fac ebook login and password. Learn more No thanks / 47 Download this Document for Free Book Reviews SINGLE BOOK REVIEWS Food in the Ancient World. Joan P. Alcock. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. 276 pp. STACIE M. KING Indiana University Food in the Ancient World describes foods produced and consumed from the beginnings of Egyptian Predynastic (4000 B.C.E.) to the end of the Roman Empire (C.E. ?fth century), focusing on four civilizations: the Egyptians, Greeks, Celts, and Romans. Joan P. Alcock s sources of information are Greek and Roman texts and Egyptian hieroglyphs, iconography, and archaeology. Because the Egyptians, Greeks, and Celts were later subsumed under the control of Rome, the book concentrates most heavily on the Roman Empire. After three lists, including biographies of classical authors, bibliographic information for major sources, and a timeline, chapter 1 provides summary information about each civilization. Alcock reviews extant population estimates and provides details about climate, natural environments, planting cycles, systems of land tenure, agricultural practices, and patterns of trade (esp. of Rome). In chapter 2, Alcock highlights individual foods, describing where, how, and by whom each was cultivated, used, and consumed. The exhaustive list ranges from cereals,legumes,fruits,andmeattocrustacea,beverages,weeds, and dairy products. The chapter reads like a series of encyclopedia entries, combining data from primary classical sources and archaeology. Information about each civilization is dispersed throughout the entries. Chapter 3 describes food-processing techniques, cookingmethods,andtechnologiesusedbytheGreeks,Romans, Egyptians, and Celts. Alcock discusses the different settings inwhichtheelitesateascomparedtomembersofthelower classes. People in power viewed bars, taverns, hotels, and ancient versions of fast-food restaurants with suspicion because of the subversive political discussions and competitivedrinkingthatoftenaccompaniedpeople svisitstothese establishments.

Inchapter4,Alcockexamineseachcivilizationinmore detail.Theauthortracesthedevelopmentofagriculture,introductionofnewfoods,andchangesinfoodconsumption chronologically as they relate to major cultural historical events. The author provides details about the political poliA MERICAN A NTHROPOLOGIST , Vol. 108, Issue 4, pp. 883 929, ISSN 0002-7294, electronic ISSN 1548-1433. C ? 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to p hotocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights. htm. cies that had effects on production and diet and weaves in an interesting discussion about the relationship among food production, economics, and the power of the elite (an obvious bias of classical writings). Chapter 5 focuses on the ways that foods were consumed in daily meals and during special occasions. Alcock discusses the categories of people that participated in religious ceremonies, banquets, and festivals; the materials attendees were expected to supply; and other activities that accompanied the events (courtesans, music, dancing, etc.). This section is important for scholars interested in social and material aspects of feasting. The chapter also describes the foods associated with warriors and military, religious ceremonies, funerary practices, and social taboos surrounding particular foodstuffs. The ?nal chapter describes the particulars (and peculiarities) of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Celtic diets. The author provides a brief overview of humoral theory and its impact on diet in the ancient world. Although Mediterraneandietswerehealthyandwellbalancedandthe Celticdietdependedonhigh-proteinanimalproducts,each varied in quality depending on the season. The best foods were often diverted to the army or market towns. Alcock also summarizes paleopathological indicators of health and life expectancy data based on skeletal analyses. People contendedwithobesity,aswellasdentalproblemsandillnesses stemming from nutritional de?ciencies, from which the poor suffered more often than the wealthy. This book is an excellent basic reference for foods, diet, and nutrition in ancient Egypt, Greece, Britain, and Rome. However, the chapters and subsections often seem disjointed because they are not tied together with introductions or conclusions. Alcock avoids in-text citation to enhance the readability of the text, but this makes it less user-friendly to an audience eager to see sources. Instead, footnotes and a selected bibliography are compiled at the end. The four ancient civilizations are at times presented as timeless and unchanging, which I think can be attributed to the organization of the volume. Discussions of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the Celts are arranged by topic and, in these short sections, it is dif?cult to go beyond essentializing statements. My biggest disappointment with the

book was its title. The borders of the ancient world, to me, 884 American Anthropologist Vol. 108, No. 4 December 2006 extend far beyond these four civilizations in both time and space. Although I would not assign this book as a text for a class, I would use it as a reference for designing a lecture on foods in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt, and I would highly recommend it to an undergraduate writing a term paper on a related topic. The volume is unique in its level of detail, organization, and compilation of data from various sources in one easy reference guide. Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community. E. N. Anderson with Aurora Dzib Xihun de Cen, Felix Medina Tzuc, and Pastor Valdez Chale. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. 274 pp. GARRETT COOK Baylor University E. N. Anderson s readable study of Maya rural economy? based on 14 months of ?eldwork between 1991 and 2001, and the collaboration of indigenous experts listed ambiguously as with the author?explores development dilemmasincontemporaryQuintanaRoo.Cultureisholisticand, therefore, political ecology is about religion and morality as well as environments, economics, and politics. Political ecology based on the free market approach is dominated by the interests of giant government-backed ?rms, does not support little communities and sustainable economies, and promotes the most serious unrecognized threat to humanity s future?the worldwide rural environmental crisis (p. 211). Anderson reveals why development using this approach fails, offers solutions to the rural crisis rooted in local culture and tradition, and calls on us to move beyond critical anthropology to identify alternatives to the neoliberal free market models that constituted the religion of late-20th-century planning for development. The wise use view?that traditional cultures of indigenous groups manage their environments effectively? represents the best starting point for sustainable development programs. In the village of Chunhuhub, each stage of regrowth in the cyclically cleared and burned forest is utilized for different resources. The forest, when properly managed,producesmorevaluethancattleranching,yetthe government sponsors cattle. Successful, sustainable adaptations like the diversi?ed Sosa farm (pp. 79 86) and the PlanForestal(pp.100 109)demonstratethatwiseusedevelopment is practical and effective. Anderson follows James Scott to argue that monocropping is the religion of government planners. Controversy over development in Yucatan is not about rational economics, then, it is a cultural?and, ultimately,political?con?ict,becausethereareentrenched elite interests in monocropping. The key to wise use success is the development of new forest products and new markets, so that the traditional system, working with its values andknowledgebase,mightintensifyproductiononitsown

terms, in response to population growth. Unfortunately the most able young people are leaving Chunhuhub, and ecological knowledge is not being passed on effectively. New churches and an emerging local version of Mexican civic culture, which lacks the moral stance on nature and balance of the traditional religion, are weakening the prospects for wise use development. Furthermore, Mexican fatalism is an obstacle to innovation. Rural and impoverished Mexicans are so used to putting up with the inevitable that they put up with the evitable as well (p. 180). Chapter 7 explores the dilemma in developing the most promising wise use resource, Maya ethnopharmacology; here, Anderson possibly provides too much botanical detailfornonspecialistsand?intheethicallysoundinterest ofprotectingMayaintellectualproperty?notreallyenough detail for botanists or pharmacologists. Anderson ?nds that there is no Maya entity to hold collective intellectual property rights: There is ...no way of assigning a particular remedy to the Yucatec or any one community (p. 193), andAndersoncannotsuggestagoodwaytocreateone.The intellectual property issue remains a serious impediment to both development and to ethnographic reporting. OffailedMexicangovernmentdevelopmentplans,Anderson notes funny little goofs like rabbit production but most extreme are the genuine tragedies of big dams and cattle deserts?the results of plans so insane that they have ruined half of rural tropical Mexico (p. 210). The real impediments to development are unfair terms of global trade, lack of knowledge of marketing, and above all else lack of accountability on the part of the elites that design the plans.Localsviewplansaselectionyeardevices: Thusthey treat the plans as milpas: things to be cropped for a year or two and then abandoned (p. 209). On rare successful plans, Anderson writes: These latter they treat as orchards: something to be cultivated and tended for the long run. Orchards are, in fact, the prime example of such plans (p. 210), although the author has made it clear that sustainable tropical wood industries, forest-based Maya pharmacology,anddiversi?edagriculturalproductionofspecialized tropical crops coupled with effective marketing would and should extend this list. In a vision reminiscent of Alvin Tof?er s electronic cottages, Anderson imagines combined high- and low-tech forest-knowledge-based household industries revitalizing Chunhuhub and Quintana Roo. This provocative book offers a compelling vision and important advice to a new generation of development experts. The writing is sometimes funny and sometimes a little bit cranky, as when Anderson writes that money earmarked for things like clearing rain forest for cattle, or providing pesticides and herbicides to farmers, is in?nitely better spent on beer than on its intended goal (p.208),butitisalwaysforthright,intelligent,andoriginal. The Kuhls of Kangra: Community-Managed Irrigation intheWesternHimalaya. J.MarkBaker.Seattle:University of Washington Press, 2005. 272 pp. NEERAJ VEDWAN Montclair State University This book provides a comprehensive account of the persistence and transformation of

kuhls? the centuries-old Single Reviews 885 community-managed irrigation systems in the western Himalaya?under conditions of intermittent environmental stresses and ever-increasing pace of socioeconomic change.Itaccomplishesthetaskconvincingly,withunusual clarity and ?air, utilizing an array of variables ranging from endogenous factors, such as the size of the community and internal socioeconomic differentiation, to exogenous ones, including the role of the state and the relationship between multiple kuhl systems. Drawing on in-depth ?eldwork, the synthetic theoretical framework comes alive with Mark J. Baker sextensiveuseofcarefulobservationsofdiversesocial situations, practices, and beliefs that comprise the warp and weft (p. 197) of the kuhl systems in the Kangra valley. Oneoftheprincipalgoalsofthebook,whichitsuccessfully accomplished, is to extend the analysis of common property regimes, especially their capacity for successful managementanddurability,fromanalmostexclusivefocus on organizational features, such as the existence of written rules, to their embeddedness in the regional social and politicalcontext.Tothisend,Bakercraftsacomplex explanatory tapestry (p. 20), weaving together theoretical insights from such diverse ?elds as organizational theory, statesociety interactions, and rational-choice paradigm. The analysis, based on the syntheses of an impressive amount of biophysical, sociocultural, and political economic data, is remarkable for its coherence and the seamless narrative it supports in the book. A main achievement of the book is its explicit attention to scale, spatial as well as sociopolitical, in shaping the heterogeneous institutional arrangements characterizing the kuhl regimes that have endured in the region. The evolutionandthedoggedpersistenceofkuhlregimescanbe comprehended satisfactorily only through an understanding of the myriad ways in which kuhl regimes articulate with the cultural, political, institutional, and environmental processes that together constitute Kangra s regionality (p. 204). Moreover, as opposed to the often-mechanical views of the functioning of self-contained systems that proliferate in studies of common property resources, Baker provides ethnographically rich and illuminating descriptions of social interactions that are the lifeblood integrating and animating the dynamic practice of communitymanaged water resources management and the relatively stable con?gurations of ideas that sustain it. The inductive approach followed throughout the bookhelpsavoidsimplisticcaricaturesofsuchcomplexand often internally divided entities as the state. Despite the fact that kuhl regimes constituted sites for pre-colonial and colonial statemaking in Kangra (p. 133), the state s role has not just been that of an interloper. In contrast, the outcomes associated with the dialectical processes of state makingandcommunitymakingarecontradictory.Attimes, the state s role vis` a-vis the kuhl regimes is that of a facili-

tator, albeit in ways characteristic of its historically speci?c composition and imperatives. For example, the state intervention has, in some cases, led to the infusion of muchneeded resources into systems that were stressed because of increased socioeconomic differentiation, whereas in others it has led to the atrophying of the local social organization andcapacitythathadunderpinnedsuccessfulkuhlmanagement. The interdependence of kuhl regimes?which provides the much-needed redundancy of resources essential for long-term sustainability in face of recurring environmental perturbations?has also been undermined by the state sponsoring of kuhl regimes. In the last several decades, the kuhl regimes have undergone signi?cant changes. Again, with close attention to detail, Baker demonstrates how geography and social inequities, including those of caste and class, intersect with the broader economic changes in the region to produce differential outcomes locally. In some cases this has translated into a greater role for the state, which promotes speci?c kinds of organizational responses such as kuhl committees. Such committees have proliferated rapidly, often at the expense of the traditional authority enjoyed by kohli (water masters). The durability of kuhl regimes is rooted in the landscape features of Kangra valley, mainly its mountainous topography, which circumscribes the scope for state intervention, as well as in extant cultural institutions and practices. The latter includes such ascribed positions as that of kohli, and widely accepted notions of generalized reciprocity in the rural areas. The relative lack of socioeconomic differentiation in the region, as manifested in fairly equitable land ownership, still overrides the divisive impact of increased household participation in the nonfarm economy, thus keeping alive the common interest in the preservation of kuhl systems. The book contains a wealth of information related to the ethnographic, historical, and sociocultural aspects of human environment interactions in an important region of South Asia. For this and its skillful integration of theory and empirical evidence, it will be invaluable to colleagues and advanced students alike. The Osteology of Infants and Children. Brenda J. Baker, Tosha L. Dupras, and Matthew W. Tocheri. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. 178 pp. JOANNE BENNETT DEVLIN University of Tennessee, Knoxville Exposure to the nuances of the subadult skeleton is a must for all who study human remains. This reference provides a framework with which to appreciate the growth and development of the human skeleton. The authors draw on tremendous ?eld experience and analytical familiarity in the bioarchaeology of subadult remains. As an extremely affordable ?eld and lab manual, this volume will facilitate improved discovery, recovery, and interpretation of the immature skeleton. This book is divided into four parts: (1) bone biology and archaeology, (2) the cranial skeleton, (3) the postcra-

nia (infracrania), and (4) quick reference materials. Part 1, divided into two chapters, lays the foundation that is followed throughout by reminding readers of the importance 886 American Anthropologist Vol. 108, No. 4 December 2006 of and the potential dif?culties in recognizing subadult bones. Chapter 1 provides cursory accounts of anatomical terminology and bone development. Although brief, this is appropriategiventhelikelihoodthatthemajorityofreaders are well versed in the adult skeleton. Nonetheless, the style and overall approach of the text will support the novice osteologist. Chapter 2 contains an insightful presentation of subadult speci?c excavation approaches and curation practices,withseveralillustrationsandphotographsfromrecent ?eldwork. Intensive coverage is afforded to the subtleties of growth and development in the skeleton through a systematic approach to each element. The focus on each bone begins with a discussion of the features that exhibit variation at major stages during maturation. Secondly, each bone or signi?cant portion of a bone is considered with respect to other bones that possess similar features that may hamper elementidenti?cation.Inaddition,techniquesusefulinthe sidingofthebonearepresented.Oftentheauthorsmakeappropriate and useful comparisons to the adult form. These discussions are supported by labeled pen and ink drawings. Many of these ?gures depict the element at multiple ages, and when possible and appropriate, the illustrations are life size. The text follows the standard progression through the skeleton, beginning with the cranial vault in chapter 3, followed by chapters on the facial skeleton and the dentition. Given the focus of this text, a discussion of the dentition must include both deciduous and permanent, which the authors do in great detail and with numerous illustrations of each tooth. The authors promote a ?ve-step approach for the correct classi?cation of each tooth: (1) tooth type, (2) permanent or deciduous, (3) maxillary or mandibular, (4) position tooth holds, and (5) right or left side, ?nally arriving at which speci?c tooth is represented. Moving below the skull, the authors dedicate part 3 to the infracranial skeleton, which is divided into four chapters beginning with vertebrae, followed by the ribs and shoulder, the arms and legs, and the hands and feet. The authors effectively focus on particular features or regions that are signi?cant in the subadult skeleton: for example, the ilium, pubis, and ichsium are presented separately. In addition, attention is drawn to the appearance of epiphyses before, during, and following union. This portion of the text is strengthened by the number of illustrations, both left and right sides, which depict many of the bones in prenatal through adolescent forms. Part 4 consists of a single chapterofreferencechartstofacilitaterapidelementidenti?cationandgeneralageestimation.Materialsincludetables of epiphyseal appearance and union, dental crown calci?-

cations, and comparative illustrations of long bones from utero through juvenile period. Part 4 is undoubtedly, as intended, a quick reference. A presentation of the subadult skeleton can be a dif?cult task given the dramatic changes that occur from the fetal period through the juvenile years, however, this book is fairly successful in providing straightforward techniques to recognize subadult bones. The authors do not promote detailed age-speci?c developmental events, rather, their intention is to outline the general attributes of bone maturation in a manner that can be effectively used to improve discovery, recovery, recognition, and identi?cation of subadult remains. Although the authors direct the readers to consult other developmental texts, this book should be considered an affordable supplement to any osteology library. The Sweet Potato in Oceania: A Reappraisal. Chris Ballard, Paula Brown, Michael Bourke, and Tracy Harwood, eds.Pittsburgh:UniversityofPittsburghPress,2005.227pp. SHIRLEY LINDENBAUM Graduate Center, City University of New York The recent ?ood of publications on food and food products?cod?sh, potato, salt, spice, sugar, coffee, and chocolate?draws attention to the ability of foods to transformthelivesofbothproducersandreceivers,totheirshifting status as luxuries consumed ?rst in high society and then by the masses, and even to the idea that the sensations themselves have a history. All these accounts, however, pivot around Western desires and tastes, or the links between commodity consumption and global processes of capitalist development. The Sweet Potato in Oceania is a different sort of venture. The West is not at the center of this picture. As Chris Ballard s masterly opening chapter notes, the sweet potato problem, ?rst de?ned by Douglas Yen in 1974,establishedalineofhistoricalinquiryconcerningthe apparently multiple introductions of the crop to Oceania. James Watson s earlier provocative contribution (1965) on the nature of its adoption and impact in New Guinea set in train a second, sociological wing of inquiry, the two lines of research that still animate investigators some 30 years later. The contributors to this volume now agree that the sweet potato was ?rst domesticated in the Americas, in the broadareaofmodernMexico,Ecuador,andPeru.Questions remain, however, on the mode, direction, and chronology of the transfer from the Americas to Oceania. Most agree with Yen that human agency, rather than natural dispersal, was the mode of transfer but contest arises about when and by whose agency. Yen had proposed a tripartite rather than a unilineal transfer: a prehistoric Kumara line from Peru to central Polynesia, a Portuguese Batatas line of the 15th 16th centuries from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, and the Spanish Kamote line from Mexico to the Philippines during the 16th century. New Guinea forms the point at which the three lines are said to converge. The chronologies of the Portuguese and Spanish transfers and the identities of the actors involved now draw little ?re. The case for the prehistoric Kumara line to

Polynesia, however, is still debated. Based on the work of several authors in this volume, R. C. Green s synthesis of the evidence for the Kumara line of transfer extends Yen s earlier paradigm and proposes an initial introduction of Single Reviews 887 sweet potato to the Cook Islands at about C.E. 1000 1100, followed by diffusion to Aotearoa, New Zealand, by C.E. 1150 1250, to Hawai i by about C.E. 1100 or 1200, and to Rapa Nui by C.E. 1300. An introduction to Polynesia much earlier than C.E. 1100 is said to be unlikely. This ?rst wave of sweet potato diffusion, associated with the colonization of outer Polynesia, is followed by a second wave involving a spread westward through central Polynesia by Polynesian travelers and traders and the European explorers and missionaries of the 18th and early 19thcenturies.ThesweetpotatothentraveledtoTongaand New Caledonia by the 1770s, to Fiji by 1804, to Samoa and Rarotonga by the 1830s, and, ?nally, to the southern Cook Islands by the 1850s. Ballard predicts that future scholars will ?ne-tune the details in Green s persuasive reconstruction but will not embark on wholesale revision. Disagreement continues over the timing and nature of sweet potato s introduction to island New Guinea. With no direct archaeological evidence, this issue remains unresolved. The consequence of its arrival, however, provides a heartier and more rewarding discussion. The huge populations in the central highlands encountered by Europeans in the 1920s and 1930s were found cultivating sweet potatoes for their own subsistence, as fodder for their pigs, and as their main wealth item, thereby contributing to impressiveformsofleadershipandcomplexsystemsofceremonial exchange. Some now propose that this high degree of agronomicandsocialelaborationcouldonlyhaveresultedfrom an evolutionary process extending over many centuries; othersseetheconversiontosweetpotatoasarevolutionary eventthatledtotheremarkabletransformationofhighland societies. This latter position, ?rst proposed by Watson, is now generally accepted for the central highlands, although the explanation ?ts the highlands fringe areas less well. This is an exciting collection of chapters, for which we have to thank Paula Brown, who in 2001 suggested to Ballard that it was time to assess recent developments in Oceanic sweet potato research. We are exposed to the ?ndings and research methods of a wide array of disciplines? linguistics, archaeology, genetics, oceanography, comparative ethnography, botany, and crop genetics. The maps and variety of ?gures are informative and often elegant. The stunningly precise 18th-century illustrations of sweet potatoes and yams on pages 66 and 67 are to Oceanic scholars what Audubon s illustrations are to birders (2003). The sweet potato has recently made another quiet return voyage to the Americas where, in addition to its culinary use, it can now be found as a decorative addition to window boxes and street plantings in the streets of New York, and perhapselsewhere,extendingthetransglobalsweepthatbegan some ten or 11 centuries earlier. REFERENCES CITED Audubon, John James

2003 Audubon s Birds of America: The Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio. Rev. ed. Roger Tory Peterson Institute, ed. New York: Abbeville Press. Watson, James 1965 From Hunting to Horticulture in the New Guinea Highlands. Ethnology 4:295 309. Yen, Douglas E. 1974 The Sweet Potato and Oceania: An Essay in Ethnobotany. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. The Struggle for Self-Determination: History of the Menominee Indians since 1854. David R. M. Beck. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 290 pp. BERNARD C. PERLEY University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee David Beck has successfully tackled the daunting task of writing a tribal history. This volume is an excellent chronicle of Menominee tribal history from the reservation period to today. The book is a meticulous documentation of a long period of extensive tribal transformations through which the Menominee people struggled to preserve and assert their tribal self-determination. The narrative is a richly detailed weaving of the social, political, and economic relations between the Menominee and the non-Menominees (to use Beck s terminology). This is the second volume of Beck s two-part history of the Menominee Indians and picks up the historical narrative from the 1854 establishment of the Menominee reservation to today. Beck adopts a historical writing method he purports is a contribution to the recent trend that includes native voices in the telling of tribal histories. This method, Beck claims, is an important corrective to the right history, which privileges dominant society s values and interpretation on one hand, and the left history, which identi?es the enemy of Indian peoples in imperialism and capitalism ontheother.HecriticizesbothhistoricalanalyticalpositionsasprocessesthatobjectifyAmericanIndiansas the reactiveparticipants (p.x)orasmuseumobjects.Beck adopts a rhetorical strategy he refers to as giving voice (p. xi) to the historical actors so that the motivations of both the Menominee and non-Menominees who participated in the history [can] be told (p. x). Beck asserts that thisnarrativestrategyshouldnot simplyaddNativevoice (p. xi) but, rather, it must be part of the analysis (p. xi). Beck s narrative is structured on parallel timelines (illustratedonpp.xii xiii)thatpresentthesigni?canteconomic, political,andsocialhistoricaleventsalongahorizontalaxis that can be read diachronically while the analytic domains (economic, political, and social) and the Menominee and non-Menominee relations can be read synchronically. In short, Beck s narrative goal is to provide a polyvocal and intertextual thick description of the Menominee struggle for self-determination (see title). This history is a chronological presentation of events that Beck argues are signi?cant in Menominee history. Within the chronological presentation, the author presents awealthofdirectquotesfromprinciple?guresintheevents described. However, in the ?rst half of the book the direct quotes of non-Menominees greatly outnumber the quotes from Menominee people. Menominee voices are relegated

Book Reviews SINGLE BOOK REVIEWS Food in the Ancient World. Joan P. Alcock. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006. 276 pp. STACIE M. KING Indiana University Food in the Ancient World describes foods produced and consumed from the beginnings of Egyptian Predynastic (4000 B.C.E.) to the end of the Roman Empire (C.E. ?fth century), focusing on four civilizations: the Egyptians, Greeks, Celts, and Romans. Joan P. Alcock s sources of information are Greek and Roman texts and Egyptian hieroglyphs, iconography, and archaeology. Because the Egyptians, Greeks, and Celts were later subsumed under the control of Rome, the book concentrates most heavily on the Roman Empire. After three lists, including biographies of classical authors, bibliographic information for major sources, and a timeline, chapter 1 provides summary information about each civilization. Alcock reviews extant population estimates and provides details about climate, natural environments, planting cycles, systems of land tenure, agricultural practices, and patterns of trade (esp. of Rome). In chapter 2, Alcock highlights individual foods, describing where, how, and by whom each was cultivated, used, and consumed. The exhaustive list ranges from cereals,legumes,fruits,andmeattocrustacea,beverages,weeds, and dairy products. The chapter reads like a series of encyclopedia entries, combining data from primary classical sources and archaeology. Information about each civilization is dispersed throughout the entries. Chapter 3 describes food-processing techniques, cookingmethods,andtechnologiesusedbytheGreeks,Romans, Egyptians, and Celts. Alcock discusses the different settings inwhichtheelitesateascomparedtomembersofthelower classes. People in power viewed bars, taverns, hotels, and ancient versions of fast-food restaurants with suspicion because of the subversive political discussions and competitivedrinkingthatoftenaccompaniedpeople svisitstothese establishments. Inchapter4,Alcockexamineseachcivilizationinmore detail.Theauthortracesthedevelopmentofagriculture,introductionofnewfoods,andchangesinfoodconsumption chronologically as they relate to major cultural historical events. The author provides details about the political poliA MERICAN A NTHROPOLOGIST , Vol. 108, Issue 4, pp. 883 929, ISSN 0002-7294, electronic ISSN 1548-1433. C ? 2006 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to p hotocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights. htm. cies that had effects on production and diet and weaves

in an interesting discussion about the relationship among food production, economics, and the power of the elite (an obvious bias of classical writings). Chapter 5 focuses on the ways that foods were consumed in daily meals and during special occasions. Alcock discusses the categories of people that participated in religious ceremonies, banquets, and festivals; the materials attendees were expected to supply; and other activities that accompanied the events (courtesans, music, dancing, etc.). This section is important for scholars interested in social and material aspects of feasting. The chapter also describes the foods associated with warriors and military, religious ceremonies, funerary practices, and social taboos surrounding particular foodstuffs. The ?nal chapter describes the particulars (and peculiarities) of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Celtic diets. The author provides a brief overview of humoral theory and its impact on diet in the ancient world. Although Mediterraneandietswerehealthyandwellbalancedandthe Celticdietdependedonhigh-proteinanimalproducts,each varied in quality depending on the season. The best foods were often diverted to the army or market towns. Alcock also summarizes paleopathological indicators of health and life expectancy data based on skeletal analyses. People contendedwithobesity,aswellasdentalproblemsandillnesses stemming from nutritional de?ciencies, from which the poor suffered more often than the wealthy. This book is an excellent basic reference for foods, diet, and nutrition in ancient Egypt, Greece, Britain, and Rome. However, the chapters and subsections often seem disjointed because they are not tied together with introductions or conclusions. Alcock avoids in-text citation to enhance the readability of the text, but this makes it less user-friendly to an audience eager to see sources. Instead, footnotes and a selected bibliography are compiled at the end. The four ancient civilizations are at times presented as timeless and unchanging, which I think can be attributed to the organization of the volume. Discussions of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and the Celts are arranged by topic and, in these short sections, it is dif?cult to go beyond essentializing statements. My biggest disappointment with the book was its title. The borders of the ancient world, to me, 884 American Anthropologist Vol. 108, No. 4 December 2006 extend far beyond these four civilizations in both time and space. Although I would not assign this book as a text for a class, I would use it as a reference for designing a lecture on foods in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt, and I would highly recommend it to an undergraduate writing a term paper on a related topic. The volume is unique in its level of detail, organization, and compilation of data from various sources in one easy reference guide. Political Ecology in a Yucatec Maya Community. E. N.

Anderson with Aurora Dzib Xihun de Cen, Felix Medina Tzuc, and Pastor Valdez Chale. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005. 274 pp. GARRETT COOK Baylor University E. N. Anderson s readable study of Maya rural economy? based on 14 months of ?eldwork between 1991 and 2001, and the collaboration of indigenous experts listed ambiguously as with the author?explores development dilemmasincontemporaryQuintanaRoo.Cultureisholisticand, therefore, political ecology is about religion and morality as well as environments, economics, and politics. Political ecology based on the free market approach is dominated by the interests of giant government-backed ?rms, does not support little communities and sustainable economies, and promotes the most serious unrecognized threat to humanity s future?the worldwide rural environmental crisis (p. 211). Anderson reveals why development using this approach fails, offers solutions to the rural crisis rooted in local culture and tradition, and calls on us to move beyond critical anthropology to identify alternatives to the neoliberal free market models that constituted the religion of late-20th-century planning for development. The wise use view?that traditional cultures of indigenous groups manage their environments effectively? represents the best starting point for sustainable development programs. In the village of Chunhuhub, each stage of regrowth in the cyclically cleared and burned forest is utilized for different resources. The forest, when properly managed,producesmorevaluethancattleranching,yetthe government sponsors cattle. Successful, sustainable adaptations like the diversi?ed Sosa farm (pp. 79 86) and the PlanForestal(pp.100 109)demonstratethatwiseusedevelopment is practical and effective. Anderson follows James Scott to argue that monocropping is the religion of government planners. Controversy over development in Yucatan is not about rational economics, then, it is a cultural?and, ultimately,political?con?ict,becausethereareentrenched elite interests in monocropping. The key to wise use success is the development of new forest products and new markets, so that the traditional system, working with its values andknowledgebase,mightintensifyproductiononitsown terms, in response to population growth. Unfortunately the most able young people are leaving Chunhuhub, and ecological knowledge is not being passed on effectively. New churches and an emerging local version of Mexican civic culture, which lacks the moral stance on nature and balance of the traditional religion, are weakening the prospects for wise use development. Furthermore, Mexican fatalism is an obstacle to innovation. Rural and impoverished Mexicans are so used to putting up with the inevitable that they put up with the evitable as well (p. 180). Chapter 7 explores the dilemma in developing the most promising wise use resource, Maya ethnopharmacology; here, Anderson possibly provides too much botanical detailfornonspecialistsand?intheethicallysoundinterest ofprotectingMayaintellectualproperty?notreallyenough detail for botanists or pharmacologists. Anderson ?nds that there is no Maya entity to hold collective intellectual property rights: There is ...no way of assigning a particular

remedy to the Yucatec or any one community (p. 193), andAndersoncannotsuggestagoodwaytocreateone.The intellectual property issue remains a serious impediment to both development and to ethnographic reporting. OffailedMexicangovernmentdevelopmentplans,Anderson notes funny little goofs like rabbit production but most extreme are the genuine tragedies of big dams and cattle deserts?the results of plans so insane that they have ruined half of rural tropical Mexico (p. 210). The real impediments to development are unfair terms of global trade, lack of knowledge of marketing, and above all else lack of accountability on the part of the elites that design the plans.Localsviewplansaselectionyeardevices: Thusthey treat the plans as milpas: things to be cropped for a year or two and then abandoned (p. 209). On rare successful plans, Anderson writes: These latter they treat as orchards: something to be cultivated and tended for the long run. Orchards are, in fact, the prime example of such plans (p. 210), although the author has made it clear that sustainable tropical wood industries, forest-based Maya pharmacology,anddiversi?edagriculturalproductionofspecialized tropical crops coupled with effective marketing would and should extend this list. In a vision reminiscent of Alvin Tof?er s electronic cottages, Anderson imagines combined high- and low-tech forest-knowledge-based household industries revitalizing Chunhuhub and Quintana Roo. This provocative book offers a compelling vision and important advice to a new generation of development experts. The writing is sometimes funny and sometimes a little bit cranky, as when Anderson writes that money earmarked for things like clearing rain forest for cattle, or providing pesticides and herbicides to farmers, is in?nitely better spent on beer than on its intended goal (p.208),butitisalwaysforthright,intelligent,andoriginal. The Kuhls of Kangra: Community-Managed Irrigation intheWesternHimalaya. J.MarkBaker.Seattle:University of Washington Press, 2005. 272 pp. NEERAJ VEDWAN Montclair State University This book provides a comprehensive account of the persistence and transformation of kuhls? the centuries-old Single Reviews 885 community-managed irrigation systems in the western Himalaya?under conditions of intermittent environmental stresses and ever-increasing pace of socioeconomic change.Itaccomplishesthetaskconvincingly,withunusual clarity and ?air, utilizing an array of variables ranging from endogenous factors, such as the size of the community and internal socioeconomic differentiation, to exogenous ones, including the role of the state and the relationship between multiple kuhl systems. Drawing on in-depth ?eldwork, the synthetic theoretical framework comes alive with Mark J. Baker sextensiveuseofcarefulobservationsofdiversesocial situations, practices, and beliefs that comprise the warp and weft (p. 197) of the kuhl systems in the Kangra valley.

Oneoftheprincipalgoalsofthebook,whichitsuccessfully accomplished, is to extend the analysis of common property regimes, especially their capacity for successful managementanddurability,fromanalmostexclusivefocus on organizational features, such as the existence of written rules, to their embeddedness in the regional social and politicalcontext.Tothisend,Bakercraftsacomplex explanatory tapestry (p. 20), weaving together theoretical insights from such diverse ?elds as organizational theory, statesociety interactions, and rational-choice paradigm. The analysis, based on the syntheses of an impressive amount of biophysical, sociocultural, and political economic data, is remarkable for its coherence and the seamless narrative it supports in the book. A main achievement of the book is its explicit attention to scale, spatial as well as sociopolitical, in shaping the heterogeneous institutional arrangements characterizing the kuhl regimes that have endured in the region. The evolutionandthedoggedpersistenceofkuhlregimescanbe comprehended satisfactorily only through an understanding of the myriad ways in which kuhl regimes articulate with the cultural, political, institutional, and environmental processes that together constitute Kangra s regionality (p. 204). Moreover, as opposed to the often-mechanical views of the functioning of self-contained systems that proliferate in studies of common property resources, Baker provides ethnographically rich and illuminating descriptions of social interactions that are the lifeblood integrating and animating the dynamic practice of communitymanaged water resources management and the relatively stable con?gurations of ideas that sustain it. The inductive approach followed throughout the bookhelpsavoidsimplisticcaricaturesofsuchcomplexand often internally divided entities as the state. Despite the fact that kuhl regimes constituted sites for pre-colonial and colonial statemaking in Kangra (p. 133), the state s role has not just been that of an interloper. In contrast, the outcomes associated with the dialectical processes of state makingandcommunitymakingarecontradictory.Attimes, the state s role vis` a-vis the kuhl regimes is that of a facilitator, albeit in ways characteristic of its historically speci?c composition and imperatives. For example, the state intervention has, in some cases, led to the infusion of muchneeded resources into systems that were stressed because of increased socioeconomic differentiation, whereas in others it has led to the atrophying of the local social organization andcapacitythathadunderpinnedsuccessfulkuhlmanagement. The interdependence of kuhl regimes?which provides the much-needed redundancy of resources essential for long-term sustainability in face of recurring environmental perturbations?has also been undermined by the state sponsoring of kuhl regimes. In the last several decades, the kuhl regimes have undergone signi?cant changes. Again, with close attention to detail, Baker demonstrates how geography and social inequities, including those of caste and class, intersect with the broader economic changes in the region to produce differential outcomes locally. In some cases this has translated

into a greater role for the state, which promotes speci?c kinds of organizational responses such as kuhl committees. Such committees have proliferated rapidly, often at the expense of the traditional authority enjoyed by kohli (water masters). The durability of kuhl regimes is rooted in the landscape features of Kangra valley, mainly its mountainous topography, which circumscribes the scope for state intervention, as well as in extant cultural institutions and practices. The latter includes such ascribed positions as that of kohli, and widely accepted notions of generalized reciprocity in the rural areas. The relative lack of socioeconomic differentiation in the region, as manifested in fairly equitable land ownership, still overrides the divisive impact of increased household participation in the nonfarm economy, thus keeping alive the common interest in the preservation of kuhl systems. The book contains a wealth of information related to the ethnographic, historical, and sociocultural aspects of human environment interactions in an important region of South Asia. For this and its skillful integration of theory and empirical evidence, it will be invaluable to colleagues and advanced students alike. The Osteology of Infants and Children. Brenda J. Baker, Tosha L. Dupras, and Matthew W. Tocheri. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005. 178 pp. JOANNE BENNETT DEVLIN University of Tennessee, Knoxville Exposure to the nuances of the subadult skeleton is a must for all who study human remains. This reference provides a framework with which to appreciate the growth and development of the human skeleton. The authors draw on tremendous ?eld experience and analytical familiarity in the bioarchaeology of subadult remains. As an extremely affordable ?eld and lab manual, this volume will facilitate improved discovery, recovery, and interpretation of the immature skeleton. This book is divided into four parts: (1) bone biology and archaeology, (2) the cranial skeleton, (3) the postcrania (infracrania), and (4) quick reference materials. Part 1, divided into two chapters, lays the foundation that is followed throughout by reminding readers of the importance 886 American Anthropologist Vol. 108, No. 4 December 2006 of and the potential dif?culties in recognizing subadult bones. Chapter 1 provides cursory accounts of anatomical terminology and bone development. Although brief, this is appropriategiventhelikelihoodthatthemajorityofreaders are well versed in the adult skeleton. Nonetheless, the style and overall approach of the text will support the novice osteologist. Chapter 2 contains an insightful presentation of subadult speci?c excavation approaches and curation prac-

tices,withseveralillustrationsandphotographsfromrecent ?eldwork. Intensive coverage is afforded to the subtleties of growth and development in the skeleton through a systematic approach to each element. The focus on each bone begins with a discussion of the features that exhibit variation at major stages during maturation. Secondly, each bone or signi?cant portion of a bone is considered with respect to other bones that possess similar features that may hamper elementidenti?cation.Inaddition,techniquesusefulinthe sidingofthebonearepresented.Oftentheauthorsmakeappropriate and useful comparisons to the adult form. These discussions are supported by labeled pen and ink drawings. Many of these ?gures depict the element at multiple ages, and when possible and appropriate, the illustrations are life size. The text follows the standard progression through the skeleton, beginning with the cranial vault in chapter 3, followed by chapters on the facial skeleton and the dentition. Given the focus of this text, a discussion of the dentition must include both deciduous and permanent, which the authors do in great detail and with numerous illustrations of each tooth. The authors promote a ?ve-step approach for the correct classi?cation of each tooth: (1) tooth type, (2) permanent or deciduous, (3) maxillary or mandibular, (4) position tooth holds, and (5) right or left side, ?nally arriving at which speci?c tooth is represented. Moving below the skull, the authors dedicate part 3 to the infracranial skeleton, which is divided into four chapters beginning with vertebrae, followed by the ribs and shoulder, the arms and legs, and the hands and feet. The authors effectively focus on particular features or regions that are signi?cant in the subadult skeleton: for example, the ilium, pubis, and ichsium are presented separately. In addition, attention is drawn to the appearance of epiphyses before, during, and following union. This portion of the text is strengthened by the number of illustrations, both left and right sides, which depict many of the bones in prenatal through adolescent forms. Part 4 consists of a single chapterofreferencechartstofacilitaterapidelementidenti?cationandgeneralageestimation.Materialsincludetables of epiphyseal appearance and union, dental crown calci?cations, and comparative illustrations of long bones from utero through juvenile period. Part 4 is undoubtedly, as intended, a quick reference. A presentation of the subadult skeleton can be a dif?cult task given the dramatic changes that occur from the fetal period through the juvenile years, however, this book is fairly successful in providing straightforward techniques to recognize subadult bones. The authors do not promote detailed age-speci?c developmental events, rather, their intention is to outline the general attributes of bone maturation in a manner that can be effectively used to improve discovery, recovery, recognition, and identi?cation of subadult remains. Although the authors direct the readers to consult other developmental texts, this book should be considered an affordable supplement to any osteology library. The Sweet Potato in Oceania: A Reappraisal. Chris

Ballard, Paula Brown, Michael Bourke, and Tracy Harwood, eds.Pittsburgh:UniversityofPittsburghPress,2005.227pp. SHIRLEY LINDENBAUM Graduate Center, City University of New York The recent ?ood of publications on food and food products?cod?sh, potato, salt, spice, sugar, coffee, and chocolate?draws attention to the ability of foods to transformthelivesofbothproducersandreceivers,totheirshifting status as luxuries consumed ?rst in high society and then by the masses, and even to the idea that the sensations themselves have a history. All these accounts, however, pivot around Western desires and tastes, or the links between commodity consumption and global processes of capitalist development. The Sweet Potato in Oceania is a different sort of venture. The West is not at the center of this picture. As Chris Ballard s masterly opening chapter notes, the sweet potato problem, ?rst de?ned by Douglas Yen in 1974,establishedalineofhistoricalinquiryconcerningthe apparently multiple introductions of the crop to Oceania. James Watson s earlier provocative contribution (1965) on the nature of its adoption and impact in New Guinea set in train a second, sociological wing of inquiry, the two lines of research that still animate investigators some 30 years later. The contributors to this volume now agree that the sweet potato was ?rst domesticated in the Americas, in the broadareaofmodernMexico,Ecuador,andPeru.Questions remain, however, on the mode, direction, and chronology of the transfer from the Americas to Oceania. Most agree with Yen that human agency, rather than natural dispersal, was the mode of transfer but contest arises about when and by whose agency. Yen had proposed a tripartite rather than a unilineal transfer: a prehistoric Kumara line from Peru to central Polynesia, a Portuguese Batatas line of the 15th 16th centuries from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, and the Spanish Kamote line from Mexico to the Philippines during the 16th century. New Guinea forms the point at which the three lines are said to converge. The chronologies of the Portuguese and Spanish transfers and the identities of the actors involved now draw little ?re. The case for the prehistoric Kumara line to Polynesia, however, is still debated. Based on the work of several authors in this volume, R. C. Green s synthesis of the evidence for the Kumara line of transfer extends Yen s earlier paradigm and proposes an initial introduction of Single Reviews 887 sweet potato to the Cook Islands at about C.E. 1000 1100, followed by diffusion to Aotearoa, New Zealand, by C.E. 1150 1250, to Hawai i by about C.E. 1100 or 1200, and to Rapa Nui by C.E. 1300. An introduction to Polynesia much earlier than C.E. 1100 is said to be unlikely. This ?rst wave of sweet potato diffusion, associated with the colonization of outer Polynesia, is followed by a second wave involving a spread westward through central Polynesia by Polynesian travelers and traders and the European explorers and missionaries of the 18th and early 19thcenturies.ThesweetpotatothentraveledtoTongaand

New Caledonia by the 1770s, to Fiji by 1804, to Samoa and Rarotonga by the 1830s, and, ?nally, to the southern Cook Islands by the 1850s. Ballard predicts that future scholars will ?ne-tune the details in Green s persuasive reconstruction but will not embark on wholesale revision. Disagreement continues over the timing and nature of sweet potato s introduction to island New Guinea. With no direct archaeological evidence, this issue remains unresolved. The consequence of its arrival, however, provides a heartier and more rewarding discussion. The huge populations in the central highlands encountered by Europeans in the 1920s and 1930s were found cultivating sweet potatoes for their own subsistence, as fodder for their pigs, and as their main wealth item, thereby contributing to impressiveformsofleadershipandcomplexsystemsofceremonial exchange. Some now propose that this high degree of agronomicandsocialelaborationcouldonlyhaveresultedfrom an evolutionary process extending over many centuries; othersseetheconversiontosweetpotatoasarevolutionary eventthatledtotheremarkabletransformationofhighland societies. This latter position, ?rst proposed by Watson, is now generally accepted for the central highlands, although the explanation ?ts the highlands fringe areas less well. This is an exciting collection of chapters, for which we have to thank Paula Brown, who in 2001 suggested to Ballard that it was time to assess recent developments in Oceanic sweet potato research. We are exposed to the ?ndings and research methods of a wide array of disciplines? linguistics, archaeology, genetics, oceanography, comparative ethnography, botany, and crop genetics. The maps and variety of ?gures are informative and often elegant. The stunningly precise 18th-century illustrations of sweet potatoes and yams on pages 66 and 67 are to Oceanic scholars what Audubon s illustrations are to birders (2003). The sweet potato has recently made another quiet return voyage to the Americas where, in addition to its culinary use, it can now be found as a decorative addition to window boxes and street plantings in the streets of New York, and perhapselsewhere,extendingthetransglobalsweepthatbegan some ten or 11 centuries earlier. REFERENCES CITED Audubon, John James 2003 Audubon s Birds of America: The Audubon Society Baby Elephant Folio. Rev. ed. Roger Tory Peterson Institute, ed. New York: Abbeville Press. Watson, James 1965 From Hunting to Horticulture in the New Guinea Highlands. Ethnology 4:295 309. Yen, Douglas E. 1974 The Sweet Potato and Oceania: An Essay in Ethnobotany. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. The Struggle for Self-Determination: History of the Menominee Indians since 1854. David R. M. Beck. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 290 pp. BERNARD C. PERLEY University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee David Beck has successfully tackled the daunting task of writing a tribal history. This volume is an excellent chronicle of Menominee tribal history from the reservation pe-

riod to today. The book is a meticulous documentation of a long period of extensive tribal transformations through which the Menominee people struggled to preserve and assert their tribal self-determination. The narrative is a richly detailed weaving of the social, political, and economic relations between the Menominee and the non-Menominees (to use Beck s terminology). This is the second volume of Beck s two-part history of the Menominee Indians and picks up the historical narrative from the 1854 establishment of the Menominee reservation to today. Beck adopts a historical writing method he purports is a contribution to the recent trend that includes native voices in the telling of tribal histories. This method, Beck claims, is an important corrective to the right history, which privileges dominant society s values and interpretation on one hand, and the left history, which identi?es the enemy of Indian peoples in imperialism and capitalism ontheother.HecriticizesbothhistoricalanalyticalpositionsasprocessesthatobjectifyAmericanIndiansas the reactiveparticipants (p.x)orasmuseumobjects.Beck adopts a rhetorical strategy he refers to as giving voice (p. xi) to the historical actors so that the motivations of both the Menominee and non-Menominees who participated in the history [can] be told (p. x). Beck asserts that thisnarrativestrategyshouldnot simplyaddNativevoice (p. xi) but, rather, it must be part of the analysis (p. xi). Beck s narrative is structured on parallel timelines (illustratedonpp.xii xiii)thatpresentthesigni?canteconomic, political,andsocialhistoricaleventsalongahorizontalaxis that can be read diachronically while the analytic domains (economic, political, and social) and the Menominee and non-Menominee relations can be read synchronically. In short, Beck s narrative goal is to provide a polyvocal and intertextual thick description of the Menominee struggle for self-determination (see title). This history is a chronological presentation of events that Beck argues are signi?cant in Menominee history. Within the chronological presentation, the author presents awealthofdirectquotesfromprinciple?guresintheevents described. However, in the ?rst half of the book the direct quotes of non-Menominees greatly outnumber the quotes from Menominee people. Menominee voices are relegated Book reviews_aa.2006.108.4.898 Download this Document for Free Print Mobile Collections Report Document Info and Rating Henrique Patto

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