504 zyxwvutsrqpo AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [93, zy 19911 zy European synthesis; the discovery of high hu- man antiquity; the career ofChildean archeol- ogy; the rise of the New Archeology and the advent of postprocessual archeology. The only real novelty is an illuminating history ofSoviet archeology, which really did deserve a chapter to itself. There are two major departures from pre- vious histories. First, the adoption of a the- matic rather than chronological framework, and second, an expansion of the account to in- clude archeological work conducted outside Europe and North America. Both innovations were worthwhile in that the variety of ideas about the goals of archeology is more effec- tively presented and explored, and the signif- icance of a truly world prehistory is sketched. The inclusion of a thoughtful concluding bib- liographic essay enhances the value of the the- matic approach, as well as demonstrating the scale of the task Trigger set for himself. A History of Archaeological Thought is by no means thc history of archeology. The scope of coverage (especially of archeological tradi- tions outside the Anglo-American) made it likely that issues peripheral to the main themes of the work got pretty superficial and largely uncritical treatment. Indeed, the scale of research required for a general history of ar- cheological thought meant that Trigger tended, unfortunately, to recycle some old chestnuts from areas outside his particular ex- pertise. Finally, the level of reconstructed so- cial and cultural context rarely rose above the cursory or the painted backdrop to the real ac- tion taking place inside archeologists’ heads. These criticisms should not be taken too seri- ously compared with the value of A History zyxwvuts of Archaeological Thought as a considered state- ment by one of the leading intellectual lights in the field. Given the steady flow of bargain- basement scholarship that has passed for “startling new insights into archeology” in re- cent years, Trigger’s good sense is more than welcome. Hunters of the Recent Past. Leslie B. Davis and Brian 0. K. Reeves, eds. One World Ar- chaeology, 15. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1990. 436 pp. $85.00 (cloth). GARY HAYNES University of Nevada This book’s 19 papers by 24 contributors (mostly American and Canadian) range from single-site analyses, to multisite interpreta- tions, to purely hypothetical models. The ed- itors offer a rationale for this mixture-they hope the book will allow readers to compare hunting strategies from different geographic regions, time periods, cultures, and biotic communities, and will inspire new under- standing of human biosocial evolution. But this collection of papers falls short of its goal, because no paper tries to tie all of the contri- butions together into an organic whole. Maybe the editors thought it unnecessary or impossible. Nevertheless, the lack of a unified approach or body of theory supporting the va- riety of interpretations is disappointing. Some papers are themselves not successful. For example, Driver’s paper centers on the possible ways that seasonal differences in an- imal behavior interact with human subsis- tence needs and practices. Driver rightly points out that archeologists should learn mammalian ecology before attempting to ex- plain hunting strategies based on archeologi- cal data, yet he is able to devote only about a page to this complex topic, and the validity of his ethnographic summaries is limited be- cause they cannot take into account environ- mental or climatic trends before, during, and after the periods of observation. For another example, Kehoe argues that Eurasian Upper Paleolithic people corralled herd animals, based on his interpretations of cave paintings, which he considers direct representations of actual events; yet no archeological evidence supports the idea that Pleistocene corrals ex- isted. Several papers attempt to reconstruct Pa- leo-Indian mammoth hunting in late glacial western North America. One by Jones has an impossible goal: to evaluate whether Clovis mammoths were killed for their fat, for pres- tige value, or for some other reason. This goal is unattainable because the needed informa- tion is not available in published site reports. Jones’s reliance on one study of Sri Lankan el- ephants to understand mammoth behavior and ecology is not justified. Another paper, by Olsen, challenges the idea that Paleo-Indians killed little else but mammoths, but this con- cept no longer needs challenging. The argu- ment that a scarcity of mammoth kill-sites means that mammoths were rarely killed is weak (but often repeated by archeologists); Africans have been killing elephants for cen- turies, yet elephant kill-sites are even rarer than those of mammoths. Several papers discussing variability in Holocene Plains bone-sites are interesting and provide new ideas about different animal- hunting methods, as well as about the func- tions of certain features, such as rock cairns and drive lanes. Reeves’s views of Plains bison hunting include a confusing jab at “Binford-