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Spatial analysis in archaeology
95
BOOK REVIEWS
All major aspects of the palaeoenvironment have been investigated. C. Vance Haynes has contributed a chapter on the late Quaternary Geology. Peter Mehringer et al. produced two pollen diagrams from spring deposits. Fauna1 remains have been investigated and Stanley A. Ahler studied the sedimentary processes at Rodgers Shelter. A chapter by Ahler and McMillan shows how the cultural remains from Rodgers Shelter reflect past human activities. Human burials were analysed by William M. Bass III and William L. Rhule II. McMillan examined the interesting claims of Albert C. Koch, a mid-nineteenth century collector, who argued that man and the mastodon coexisted in the Pomme de Terre Valley. McMillan rejected this claim. A synopsis chapter ties the various lines of inquiry together and an epilogue outlines the plans for future research. The attractive and spacious lay-out of this book makes it a pleasure to read and its excellent organization makes it easy to look up a particular topic. The book is well illustrated with maps, photographs, diagrams and tables. Raw data are presented in a clear fashion so that reinterpretation by readers is facilitated. References are at the end of each chapter, and are very easy to use. Appendix A is a list of the potential food plants of the western Missouri Ozarks, including the parts eaten, the habitat, the season available and the source of information for each plant. Ethnobotanists working in this area will find the list very useful. Many of the project results are both interesting and important. By combining environmental data from Rodgers Shelter and the valley springs, the authors have produced one of the longest Quaternary sequences for the midwestern part of what is now the United States. The pollen diagrams indicate a shift about 23,000 to 25,000 bp from a zone composed mainly of pine and sedges to a zone heavily dominated by spruce. This is in general accord with other diagrams from the Midwest. The palynological investigations yielded a clear association of mastodon and pine-dominated pollen. This is the first such association recorded for unglaciated North America. Previously mastodon has been thought to be a spruce forest inhabitant. McMillan states that the fauna1 data from Rodgers Shelter suggest that from about 8600 bp to perhaps 4000 bp, woodland species declined and grassland species increased (p. 228). A greater interest in small prairie game during this time may have reflected a growing scarcity of deer, an animal which prefers forest margins. After 3000 bp the remains of deer, turkey and racoon increase and all grassland species disappear from Rodgers Shelter. This probably indicates an encroachment of forest upon prairie. These results will be of interest to ecologists studying the formation of the North American grasslands, but King and Lindsay point out (p. 75) that because small mammals apparently did not change their geographic distributions during the climatic fluctuations of the late Pleistocene in the Midwest and because their wide distributions suggest greater tolerances than is the case at present, one must be extremely careful in drawing climatic-ecological conclusions from the late Pleistocene geography of these animals. Prehistoric Man and His Environments is a useful source of information for archaeologists working in the Midwest as well as a good example of the sort of results that can emerge from a successful interdisciplinary project. Monica Barnes
Analysis in Archaeology. By Ian Hodder and Clive Orton. 1976. 270 pp. + many illustrations + index + bibliography. Cambridge University Press. &7-95.
Spatial
This is a welcome book. For the first time an attempt has been made to present, discuss and compare all the major mathematical methods of spatial analysis which are applicable to archaeological data. Hodder and Orton, respectively an archaeologist and a statistician, have written a book around a number of exploratory studies of their own
BOOK REVIEWS
97
but have added such extensive references to other related work, and have organized the whole so neatly, that the result is a very valuable survey of an increasingly important branch of archaeological method. An initial discussion of the role of spatial distributions in archaeological work, especially of site and artifact distributions, leads to a study of point patterns and quadrat and nearest-neighbour techniques for investigating non-randomness. This in turn leads naturally to a consideration of models for settlement patterns including hierarchical structures. The authors then consider the spatial distribution of artifact types, especially the use of regression analysis in the study of artifact dispersal from production centres. They follow this first with a discussion of some simple Monte Carlo simulations of relevant random-walk processes and then with presentations of trend surface analysis, spatial autocorrelation and gravity models. Finally they consider techniques for comparing spatial distributions. Throughout, the authors maintain a high standard of lucidity, mathematical grip, and common sense. They are always careful to indicate the limitations as well as the strengths of the techniques they consider and to discuss the likely validity in archaeological contexts of any necessary assumptions, for example, random sampling assumptions. Rarely, if ever, is one left with the impression that a technique has hopefully been applied to a data set in defiance of its unsuitability. Given these virtues, it is unfortunate that the book is mathematically sufficiently demanding that it will not easily be read by the average archaeologist. Although the authors do provide a brief statistical introduction, this is little more than a list of definitions. The reader is expected to come equipped with a reasonable understanding of basic statistical notions such as probability distributions, likelihood functions and hypothesis testing and, of course, of the concepts of algebra and analysis upon which statistical theory is erected. So the book is immediately suitable only for those relatively few archaeologists who have acquired this degree of statistical sophistication and for statisticians interested in spatial techniques. The book is perhaps a little too completely statistical in its content. The formal techniques described have largely been imported into archaeology from subjects such as geography and ecology and originate in classical statistical theory and practice. This leads to a particular orientation the limitations of which the authors have not really attempted to overcome. For example, they barely mention the distinction between nominal, ordinal and interval data scales which is a feature of much contemporary social science statistical work, nor do they make much mention of relational structures such as graphs or trees. More importantly, they inherit from classical theory the central role of the significance test and the problems associated with it. How exactly does one justify, for example, adopting a random process of settlement location as a null hypothesis when it is obvious that settlements are never located at random? Hodder and Orton are clearly aware of the uncertainties associated with the notions of a “random pattern” and a “null hypothesis”, and they provide useful discussions of some of these uncertainties, but they are not tempted by these difficulties to move outside the statistical tradition. Another indication of the conventional statistical origins of this kind of spatial analysis is the authors’ failure formally to get to grips with the admittedly difficult concept of a process. They rightly stress that it is spatial process that must really concern us, not spatial patterning, but then never really pose the question: “what is a process and how best can I model one?“. They nowhere consider the theory of stochastic processes nor, more importantly, do they take the topic of computer simulation beyond simple Monte Carlo methods. Yet complex continuous and discrete-event computer simulation models are the most flexible process modelling tools we possess and are now being used in locational studies.
98
BOOK REVIEWS
But these criticisms should not be taken too seriously. Within their natural terms of reference Hodder and Orton have done very well. And the volume itself is attractively prepared, with excellent figures, an index and an extensive bibliography. This is the first of a series of “innovatory” archaeological texts owing its genesis to the late David L. Clarke, and it sets a high standard for its successors. James Doran
The History
of the British Flora: A Factual Basis for Phytogeography.
Second Edition. By Sir Harry Godwin. 1975. x+ 541 pp. +28 plates with numerous text figures and tables. London : Cambridge University Press. 530. Such was the status of the first edition of this monumental work that it was occasionally cited not as (Godwin, 1956) but as (Godwin, Hist). It was the one instantly recognizable volume on a palaeoecologist’s bookshelf and an indispensable work of reference. It was also much more than a mere compendium of plant history, the “Factual Basis” of the sub-title-Godwin’s lucid style and unique authority in drawing a vegetational history from the plant records were major factors in its success. This new edition is in many ways a worthy successor, although in some ways it is disappointing, mainly in the exclusion of recent detailed pollen diagrams. Such diagrams could well have replaced some of the older ones carried forward from the first edition and the same criticism can be made of some of the plates, particularly of those of pollen grains. But these are small deficiencies, probably imposed by a need to contain the costs of an inherently expensive work within reasonable limits. The “Plant Record” remains the core of the work and now covers 334 pages compared with 223 pages in the old edition. There is also more information per page through the ingenious use of frequency histograms and maps for a large number of species enabling the relative importance and continuity of presence of many taxa to be seen at a glance. Various important taxa, mainly tree species, are treated at length in essays covering several of the large-format pages and displaying an astonishing breadth of knowledge and first-hand experience on Godwin’s part. These accounts will be of great value to archaeologists without botanical training for they cover the basics of the species’ ecology as well as its history in Britain and adjacent parts of Europe. However, it must be borne in mind that the plant records included are those which were incorporated in the Cambridge “data-bank” by the cutoff date of 1970 and that these records and the sites to which they refer were not an exhaustive list even then. This fact, and the fact that revising such a large work obviously stretched over some years explain some of the omissions-the preface is dated 1972, though some 1973 references have been included. Jane Renfrew’s Palaeoethnobotany is not amongst these and the cereals section may therefore appear dated to environmental archaeologists, though the coverage of botanical material from archaeological sites is generally of a high standard. Inevitably this valuable Plant Record will become more and more out-of-date even though it will remain correct in outline. What is surely needed is financial support to maintain the Cambridge data-bank and to issue regular supplements to the Plant Record. Perhaps such an enterprise could be made self-supporting on a subscription basis or else the supplements could be issued as additions to a journal in the same way as radiocarbon dates were first reported? The record sections are, as in the first edition, prefaced by sections on sample collection and identification and on the “Background scale of Pleistocene events”, and followed by a masterly synthesis, the “Pattern of change in the British flora”. These sections,
BOOK REVIEWS
All major aspects of the palaeoenvironment have been investigated. C. Vance Haynes has contributed a chapter on the late Quaternary Geology. Peter Mehringer et al. produced two pollen diagrams from spring deposits. Fauna1 remains have been investigated and Stanley A. Ahler studied the sedimentary processes at Rodgers Shelter. A chapter by Ahler and McMillan shows how the cultural remains from Rodgers Shelter reflect past human activities. Human burials were analysed by William M. Bass III and William L. Rhule II. McMillan examined the interesting claims of Albert C. Koch, a mid-nineteenth century collector, who argued that man and the mastodon coexisted in the Pomme de Terre Valley. McMillan rejected this claim. A synopsis chapter ties the various lines of inquiry together and an epilogue outlines the plans for future research. The attractive and spacious lay-out of this book makes it a pleasure to read and its excellent organization makes it easy to look up a particular topic. The book is well illustrated with maps, photographs, diagrams and tables. Raw data are presented in a clear fashion so that reinterpretation by readers is facilitated. References are at the end of each chapter, and are very easy to use. Appendix A is a list of the potential food plants of the western Missouri Ozarks, including the parts eaten, the habitat, the season available and the source of information for each plant. Ethnobotanists working in this area will find the list very useful. Many of the project results are both interesting and important. By combining environmental data from Rodgers Shelter and the valley springs, the authors have produced one of the longest Quaternary sequences for the midwestern part of what is now the United States. The pollen diagrams indicate a shift about 23,000 to 25,000 bp from a zone composed mainly of pine and sedges to a zone heavily dominated by spruce. This is in general accord with other diagrams from the Midwest. The palynological investigations yielded a clear association of mastodon and pine-dominated pollen. This is the first such association recorded for unglaciated North America. Previously mastodon has been thought to be a spruce forest inhabitant. McMillan states that the fauna1 data from Rodgers Shelter suggest that from about 8600 bp to perhaps 4000 bp, woodland species declined and grassland species increased (p. 228). A greater interest in small prairie game during this time may have reflected a growing scarcity of deer, an animal which prefers forest margins. After 3000 bp the remains of deer, turkey and racoon increase and all grassland species disappear from Rodgers Shelter. This probably indicates an encroachment of forest upon prairie. These results will be of interest to ecologists studying the formation of the North American grasslands, but King and Lindsay point out (p. 75) that because small mammals apparently did not change their geographic distributions during the climatic fluctuations of the late Pleistocene in the Midwest and because their wide distributions suggest greater tolerances than is the case at present, one must be extremely careful in drawing climatic-ecological conclusions from the late Pleistocene geography of these animals. Prehistoric Man and His Environments is a useful source of information for archaeologists working in the Midwest as well as a good example of the sort of results that can emerge from a successful interdisciplinary project. Monica Barnes
Analysis in Archaeology. By Ian Hodder and Clive Orton. 1976. 270 pp. + many illustrations + index + bibliography. Cambridge University Press. &7-95.
Spatial
This is a welcome book. For the first time an attempt has been made to present, discuss and compare all the major mathematical methods of spatial analysis which are applicable to archaeological data. Hodder and Orton, respectively an archaeologist and a statistician, have written a book around a number of exploratory studies of their own
BOOK REVIEWS
97
but have added such extensive references to other related work, and have organized the whole so neatly, that the result is a very valuable survey of an increasingly important branch of archaeological method. An initial discussion of the role of spatial distributions in archaeological work, especially of site and artifact distributions, leads to a study of point patterns and quadrat and nearest-neighbour techniques for investigating non-randomness. This in turn leads naturally to a consideration of models for settlement patterns including hierarchical structures. The authors then consider the spatial distribution of artifact types, especially the use of regression analysis in the study of artifact dispersal from production centres. They follow this first with a discussion of some simple Monte Carlo simulations of relevant random-walk processes and then with presentations of trend surface analysis, spatial autocorrelation and gravity models. Finally they consider techniques for comparing spatial distributions. Throughout, the authors maintain a high standard of lucidity, mathematical grip, and common sense. They are always careful to indicate the limitations as well as the strengths of the techniques they consider and to discuss the likely validity in archaeological contexts of any necessary assumptions, for example, random sampling assumptions. Rarely, if ever, is one left with the impression that a technique has hopefully been applied to a data set in defiance of its unsuitability. Given these virtues, it is unfortunate that the book is mathematically sufficiently demanding that it will not easily be read by the average archaeologist. Although the authors do provide a brief statistical introduction, this is little more than a list of definitions. The reader is expected to come equipped with a reasonable understanding of basic statistical notions such as probability distributions, likelihood functions and hypothesis testing and, of course, of the concepts of algebra and analysis upon which statistical theory is erected. So the book is immediately suitable only for those relatively few archaeologists who have acquired this degree of statistical sophistication and for statisticians interested in spatial techniques. The book is perhaps a little too completely statistical in its content. The formal techniques described have largely been imported into archaeology from subjects such as geography and ecology and originate in classical statistical theory and practice. This leads to a particular orientation the limitations of which the authors have not really attempted to overcome. For example, they barely mention the distinction between nominal, ordinal and interval data scales which is a feature of much contemporary social science statistical work, nor do they make much mention of relational structures such as graphs or trees. More importantly, they inherit from classical theory the central role of the significance test and the problems associated with it. How exactly does one justify, for example, adopting a random process of settlement location as a null hypothesis when it is obvious that settlements are never located at random? Hodder and Orton are clearly aware of the uncertainties associated with the notions of a “random pattern” and a “null hypothesis”, and they provide useful discussions of some of these uncertainties, but they are not tempted by these difficulties to move outside the statistical tradition. Another indication of the conventional statistical origins of this kind of spatial analysis is the authors’ failure formally to get to grips with the admittedly difficult concept of a process. They rightly stress that it is spatial process that must really concern us, not spatial patterning, but then never really pose the question: “what is a process and how best can I model one?“. They nowhere consider the theory of stochastic processes nor, more importantly, do they take the topic of computer simulation beyond simple Monte Carlo methods. Yet complex continuous and discrete-event computer simulation models are the most flexible process modelling tools we possess and are now being used in locational studies.
98
BOOK REVIEWS
But these criticisms should not be taken too seriously. Within their natural terms of reference Hodder and Orton have done very well. And the volume itself is attractively prepared, with excellent figures, an index and an extensive bibliography. This is the first of a series of “innovatory” archaeological texts owing its genesis to the late David L. Clarke, and it sets a high standard for its successors. James Doran
The History
of the British Flora: A Factual Basis for Phytogeography.
Second Edition. By Sir Harry Godwin. 1975. x+ 541 pp. +28 plates with numerous text figures and tables. London : Cambridge University Press. 530. Such was the status of the first edition of this monumental work that it was occasionally cited not as (Godwin, 1956) but as (Godwin, Hist). It was the one instantly recognizable volume on a palaeoecologist’s bookshelf and an indispensable work of reference. It was also much more than a mere compendium of plant history, the “Factual Basis” of the sub-title-Godwin’s lucid style and unique authority in drawing a vegetational history from the plant records were major factors in its success. This new edition is in many ways a worthy successor, although in some ways it is disappointing, mainly in the exclusion of recent detailed pollen diagrams. Such diagrams could well have replaced some of the older ones carried forward from the first edition and the same criticism can be made of some of the plates, particularly of those of pollen grains. But these are small deficiencies, probably imposed by a need to contain the costs of an inherently expensive work within reasonable limits. The “Plant Record” remains the core of the work and now covers 334 pages compared with 223 pages in the old edition. There is also more information per page through the ingenious use of frequency histograms and maps for a large number of species enabling the relative importance and continuity of presence of many taxa to be seen at a glance. Various important taxa, mainly tree species, are treated at length in essays covering several of the large-format pages and displaying an astonishing breadth of knowledge and first-hand experience on Godwin’s part. These accounts will be of great value to archaeologists without botanical training for they cover the basics of the species’ ecology as well as its history in Britain and adjacent parts of Europe. However, it must be borne in mind that the plant records included are those which were incorporated in the Cambridge “data-bank” by the cutoff date of 1970 and that these records and the sites to which they refer were not an exhaustive list even then. This fact, and the fact that revising such a large work obviously stretched over some years explain some of the omissions-the preface is dated 1972, though some 1973 references have been included. Jane Renfrew’s Palaeoethnobotany is not amongst these and the cereals section may therefore appear dated to environmental archaeologists, though the coverage of botanical material from archaeological sites is generally of a high standard. Inevitably this valuable Plant Record will become more and more out-of-date even though it will remain correct in outline. What is surely needed is financial support to maintain the Cambridge data-bank and to issue regular supplements to the Plant Record. Perhaps such an enterprise could be made self-supporting on a subscription basis or else the supplements could be issued as additions to a journal in the same way as radiocarbon dates were first reported? The record sections are, as in the first edition, prefaced by sections on sample collection and identification and on the “Background scale of Pleistocene events”, and followed by a masterly synthesis, the “Pattern of change in the British flora”. These sections,