BOOK REVIEWS 155 discussion links Quirigua's history not only to the fortunesof its largerneighbor, Copan, but also toother important Maya polities and to environmental events such as floods. In Chapter 5 demographic findings suggest that at itspeak, Quirigua was home to between 1,600 and 3,200 individuals, with outlying villages and farmsteads surrounding a more densely populated core area. The rich alluvial floodplain would have made agriculture less of a challenge than elsewhere in the Maya area, and there is significant discussion of cacao having been an important economic crop, thoughevidence forthis is largely anecdotal. Chapter 6 summarizes evidencefor social and economic hierarchies and integration, concluding that Quirigua' was less stratified thanCopan and distinct in its economic and political relationships. In Chapters 7 and 8 Ashmore interprets architectural data and concludes that Quirigua's rulers mimicked the use of space at Copan to elevate their publicstatus and increase their authority, loosely following spatial models established centuries before at Tikal. The built environment becameimbued with meaning, only to become embedded in social memory and commemorated and revered through ritual as ameansof insuring socialcontinuity. This volume represents a significant contribution to Maya archaeology in general and settlement studies specifically. In terms of data presentation, synthesis, and interpretation, this volumeis the most comprehensive of its kind. However, Quirigua' is atypical among Lowlands sites,with its earlier households buried under alluvium, makingcomparison with thefindings of other studies difficult.Despite this, and its $100 price tag, it should be required reading for allMayanists interested in thebuilt environment, though the cost may keep it off manyshelves. Keith Malcolm Prufer University of NewMexico Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica. Christopher A. Pool. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007,354 pp. $75.00,cloth; $29.99, paper. The origins of civilization and the anthropological archaeology that examines notions of archaic statecraftare some of the most compelling arenas for study in the socialsciences. Although manydisciplines haveconjectured andcontinue to evaluate how and why cultures adopted a ranked-to-stratified social institutional base,archaeology alone provides the material remains. TheOlmec civilization of the Gulf Coast as well as its several "sister" manifestations throughout ancient Mesoamerica are the subject of this volume. Pool deftly contextualizes the rise and subsequent blending ofall things Olmec, beginning withsedentism and continuing with the origins ofwriting, calendrics, and truly complexsocioeconomic and sociopolitical organization. His is a fine example of reflective, synthetic, and thorough scholarship of the first order. The book is divided into eight chapters, the firstproviding a theoretical overview of the debated issues in Mesoamerican archaeology and how the data Journal ofAnthropological Research, vol. 64, 2008 This content downloaded from 129.137.096.004 on June 08, 2017 08:49:26 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).