Prehistory of the Southwest /

A comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the prehistory of the American southwest (including northern Mexico). The book begins with a survey of modern Native American cultures of the region as ``end products'' of 12,000 years of development. An excellent survey of southwestern environmental diversity precedes a thorough review of the current state of our knowledge of southwestern prehistory from the late Pleistocene to the period of Spanish contact. The objective presentation of conflicting interpretations of aspects of the region's prehistory is one of the book's many strengths. There are also excellent bibliographic sources for the interested reader to consult. Extremely well written and well illustrated, this work supersedes earlier books such as P.S. Martin and F. Plog's The Archaeology of Arizona (CH, Dec '73) and Volume 9 of the Handbook of North American Indians (CH, Feb '81), which covers the southwest. For all libraries.-W.A. Longacre, University of Arizona