On Raymond's Review of Moundbuilders of the Amazon ANNA CURTENIUS ROOSEVELT Field Museum of Natural History, and University of Illinois at Chicago Scott Raymond's review follows a long Amazonian tradition of focusing on specious criticisms to the exclusion of contributions to knowledge. In our passionately rivalrous field, reviewers fault authors for not meeting idiosyncratic standards that the reviewers themselves have not fulfilled. In fact, since the seventies most reviews have been by those who have not published monographs on their research. This review is the latest of these. Raymond begins by dismissing the book as hyperbole without accurate factual support and"well-supported, carefully reasoned argument," despite the detailed discussion and documentation of evidence for different interpretations. Raymond misstates the theoretical stance of the book by quoting the initial hypothesis instead of the final conclusions. I wrote in theconclusions, 'Therefore, archaeological evidence for the characteristics of social organization is not conclusive and could be interpreted several different ways (p. 411)...it can be seen how an iconography with emphasis on females might be consonant with a male-dominated society (p. 413)....The hypothesis...is problematical...(p. 417)". Moving to the archaeological report, Raymond states that its reliability is in serious doubt for several reasons. He faults the four-scale topographic and geophysical maps because the different data sets were not superimposed in a single map for comparison. This criticism goes against both reason and Raymond's own practice. All the data on one map would have been illegible and impossible to compare. For comparison all maps and excavations have the site's metric grid coordinates, and the summary map superimposes all surveys. The lone site map from Raymond's research (p. 48 in his 1973 unpublished dissertation of 250 double spaced pages) includes less information than any of mine. In fact, none of the standard information-topography, grid, datum, and individual excavations-was "superimposed" on his hand-drawn map. Raymond's criticism here is hypocritical. Pursuing his themes, Raymond manufactures errors by manipulating data. He mismeasures the site and calls my measurements wrong because they are different. Using the c. 1.5 hectares mound top as its size, he terms erroneous my measurements of c. 2.5 hectares for the base and c. 3 hectares fortotal archaeological remains (mound, apron, and borrow pit). But measuring only the top underestimates its size and is nonstandard procedure, for obvious reasons. Similarly, when Raymond calls differences between magnetic anomaly outlines and hearths at Profile U (pp. 260- 262) "discrepancies," he misrepresents geophysical archaeology. What he ignores is the fact that magnetometers cannot map hearths like x-rays of tooth cavities but rather reflect the overall distribution of major magnetic masses as influenced by distance and polarity. Magnetic material often extends beyond anomaly borders, which often bulge beyond the magnetic material, due to polarity. In regard to the location of hearths in the anomaly, a section cannot show all the features at an anomaly but only those in that narrow slice. Others were exposed in the plan view. In the same vein, Raymond finds a serious "mistake" 7fo LATIN AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW 4(2) 89 because hearths detected magnetically had more fire ant nests than hearths that were not detected. He assumes that simple rate of ant nests determines likelihood of detection. However, as shown in the report, nests perse (ubiquitous at the site) were no barrier to detecting hearth groups unless they disturbed magnetic material. Most penetrated soft fill, not baked clay hearth walls, and did not affect the magnetism. The undetected hearths' had been pulverized by the creatures. There is no basis for calling such variation a "mistake." Raymond claims poor labeling and coordination between profiles and dates, but major strata and features are labeled, and dates are keyed by depths and levels to strata, which he conflates. In Raymond's report, in contrast, the two profiles lack strata labels, there are no plans or features, and no depths for dates. Finally, Raymond inflates a typographic error of missing decimal point into a fatal flaw, despite a much higher rate of such errors in his dissertation (nine in two successive pages, forexample, pp. 51,54). Moundbuildershas many unfortunate typos, due to length, my word processing, and incomplete copy-editing (the publisher lost the manuscript and refused to re-edit fully). It is right to criticize Academic Press's typos, but Academic is one of the few companies (other than university presses) willing to publish extensive tables, maps, and cross- sections. Raymond ends with speculations about my motivation, attributing the "errors" to hasty publishing in order to be considered original and advance academically. But a book after nine years research and five years in preparation can only be considered instant publishing in comparison to Raymond, with no excavation report after 25 years. Far from claiming originality to advance, I attribute my discoveries to earlier scholars, had a senior tenured position before the book, and chose a career in museum anthropology, not the academic fast track. Raymond wishes to discredit my book but his review tells more about his inadequacies and the dysfunctional sociology of Amazonian archaeology than about the book. Let Raymond and his colleagues publish the details of their research before faulting those of us who publish our workf or all to see. By only publishing summaries, they conceal from readers the fact that their research and reporting does not even approach the standards of those they seek to criticize. Ancient Mexico: Cultural Traditions in the Land of the Feathered Serpent. JACQUELINE PHILLIPS LATHROP. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1991. Bibliography, illustrations, 183 pp. $20.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8403-6426-1. JILL LESLIE FURST Moore College of Art and Design Lathrop's Ancient Mexico covers all of Mesoamerica, beginning with the arrival of human beings in the New World and ending with the conquest of Mexico. In between, she discusses, in less than 200 pages, the major arts of no fewer than ten cultures in Mexico and the Maya area. Naturally, the text must be superficial, although this is not necessarily a criticism. Lathrop provides only the bare bones of Mesoamerican chronology and cultural development that the