Review by Choice Review
Raab (emer., California State Univ., Northridge) and his coauthors aim at transforming understanding of North America's maritime prehistory through the synthesis of archaeological data from San Clemente Island (part of California's Channel Islands) spanning at least nine thousand years of its settlement. Despite documented relic-hunting activities, the island's thousands of archaeological sites are seen as a veritable time capsule because of lack of development, environmental conditions predisposed to preservation (including a lack of burrowing animals to disturb deposits), lack of easy access, and close management by the US Navy. Organized into three temporal divisions (early, middle, and late Holocene) sandwiched between introductory and concluding sections, 12 chapters cover many topics, from the maritime cultural origins of the islanders and the evolution of sophisticated watercraft to Native American coastal settlement and adaptation, foraging strategies, responses to environmental change, and reactions to European contact and settlement. The authors also engage in an analysis of the development of theoretical and methodological approaches utilized on the islands since the late 19th century and, in doing so, illustrate how ingrained cultural bias may play a role in the interpretation of prehistory. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. N. T. Richards East Carolina University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
