Society for American Archaeology

Society for American Archaeology Review Author(s): Monica Barnes Review by: Monica Barnes Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp. 589-590 Published by: Society for American Archaeology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/282119 Accessed: 27-07-2015 17:44 UTC

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REVIEWS

In addition, a set of resolutions is included, which was adopted at the conference. These, although totaling only two pages in the volume, are of particular interest since they focus on new problem areas for study in the region (e.g., lack of information on low coral islands); discussion of current issues of importance to the preservation community (e.g., human skeletal remains and historic shipwrecks); political questions (e.g., the plight of the Bikini Islanders); environmental issues (e.g., the U.S. Army on Kwajalein); and the Council of Micronesian Historic Preservation Officers (HPO) and its increasingly important actions. The HPO Council is of special significance because the group surmounts political barriers. It deals with traditional cultural concerns regionally-which are now being severely impacted with the onslaught of tourism, global politics, and other intrusions from both east and west of the Pacific Rim. This council not only strives to protect the cultural and natural resources of the area, but it is aligned with the National Conference of Historic Preservation Officers in the United States and further has had some additional political clout and other benefits derived from treaty agreements between the Trust Territories and the United States government. Indeed, many of the studies reported at this conference resulted from projects funded by federal grants to Micronesian historic-preservation programs as Rosalind Hunter-Anderson and Michael Graves pointed out in their excellent introduction to the volume. The two also note that due to this backing with funds from the United States, the majority of the "conference papers were presented by Americans or American-trained scholars" (p. 5). Moreover, other federal programs contributed to funding the conference itself. It is hoped that there will be a follow-up to the themes explored in this work. The aforementioned resolutions might serve as a guide for future historic-preservation studies in Micronesia and as the basis of further volumes on the area. Akhenaten: King of Egypt. CYRIL ALDRED. Thames and Hudson, New York, 1991. 328 pp., figures, plates, bibliography, index. $19.95 (paper). Reviewed by Kathryn A. Bard, Boston University. Akhenaten, who began his reign as Amenhotep IV, lived in a very opulent period, the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty in the fourteenth century B.C. Egypt's empire extended well beyond its borders, from Upper Nubia into southwest Asia, and vast amounts of tribute and ritual gifts were paid to Egypt. But Akhenaten's place in history is not that of a great warrior king. He was the husband of Nefertiti, and the half-brother and father-in-law of Tutankhaten, who later changed his name to Tutankhamen when he became king at age 12. At some point later in his reign, Akhenaten had children by two of his six daughters, one of which became the queen of Tutankhamen. The so-called Amarna period, named after the archaeological site of Tell el Amarna in Middle Egypt where Akhenaten built his capital, is one of the most richly documented periods of Egyptian history. Akhenaten's capital, Akhe-

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taten, was intentionally located away from the power centers in the north and south, and is the only wellpreserved city known from pharaonic times. Because of the great wealth of archaeological and textual evidence from Amarna and Karnak, many of the details of Akhenaten's unusual reign are known today. The French began investigations at Tell el Amarna in 1883, and excavations by Barry Kemp of the University of Cambridge continue there today. At East Karnak, where Akhenaten built six temples before he moved his capital to Middle Egypt, excavations are being conducted by Donald Redford of the University of Toronto. Unfortunately, Aldred's book only briefly mentions these recent excavations, and instead is an updated version of his book on Akhenaten published in 1968 by McGraw Hill. It is written from the perspective of an Egyptologist who is interested in delineating the outline of history of the Amarna period through a study of its texts, art, and monumental architecture. The Amarna period is no doubt fascinating, and Akhenaten is a very enigmatic figure. Enormous cultural changes took place during Akhenaten's reign, and he was probably directly responsible for many of them. The bizarrely mannered art, the familiar and undignified scenes of the king being affectionate with his family, tomb reliefs that no longer depicted the traditional scenes of provisioning of the afterlife, and temple architecture which was directly open to the sunthese were all changes seen in the art and architecture at Amarna. But other major changes also occurred. For the first time vernacular Late Egyptian was written in hieroglyphs, replacing the archaic Middle Egyptian, which had been used in official texts for over 600 years. Most revolutionary was Akhenaten's religious heresy, for he seems to have ignored the worship of other Egyptian cults, worshipping instead only one god, the Aten, shown as a sun disk. Egypt at this time had a huge full-time army, and in the tomb reliefs at Amarna they seem to have done little else but parade. After Akhenaten's death the two major sociopolitical institutions in Egypt (aside from the kingship)-the cult of Amen-Re centered at Karnak and the army-exacted their revenge. Akhenaten's city was abandoned by the court, his temples were dismantled, and his image and cartouches were hacked out by agents of the crown. The Amarna period, then, is an extremely interesting one, and recent excavations have uncovered much economic data from the clearly differentiated society at Amarna. But in Aldred's book we are given a onesided view of the kingship and the court, its royal art and architecture. This is a historical-particularist study, fascinating as an anomaly in Egyptian history, but providing a limited view of the dynamics of Egyptian culture of the time. Here is a wealth of information on how one individual thought and brought about major cultural changes, but these changes were very shortlived, with little or no effect on internal social transformations or the institutions of the Egyptian state. Large-Site Methodology: Architectural Analysis and Dual Organization in the Andes. RAFFAEL CAVALLARO. Occasional Papers No. 5. Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Canada, 1991.


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viii + 77 pp., tables, figures, bibliography. Can $12.50 (paper).

[Vol. 58, No. 3, 1993]

ology, University of California, Los Angeles, 1990. xii + 712 pp., figures, tables, plates, appendixes, bibliography, indexes. $48.00 (cloth).

Reviewed by Monica Barnes, Cornell University. Many of archaeology's greatest difficulties stem from a lack of sustained, large-scale excavation. In contrast to the Old World where teams often reside and dig at important sites for decades, South American archaeology is usually conducted by small groups with resources for only a few seasons. Consequently, sweeping conclusions are frequently made on the basis of limited survey and tiny holes. Cavallaro has searched for a sound, efficient, and inexpensive solution to the problems posed by restricted fieldwork. Focusing on the Chimu capital of Chan Chan, a major adobe ruin on Peru's North Coast, Cavallaro worked to extract as much information as possible from statistics, a computer, aerial photographs of standing architecture, and ground checks. Although excavation has been undertaken at Chan Chan, important portions of the vast city had been virtually destroyed by artifact hunters before adequate archaeological investigations occurred. This has limited the possibilities for dating with artifact sequences. Cavallaro demolished prior chronologies based upon brick dimensions by showing that when measure of spread is taken into account, brick height-to-width ratios allow only two groups. With refinements, he accepts Conrad's burial platform ordering. After scrutinizing the architectural attributes of Chan Chan's compounds, Cavallaro concludes that they were built in pairs, beginning with Chayhuac and Squier and ending with Bandelier and Velarde. He interprets this pattern as evidence for a dual sociopolitical organization, perhaps ancestral to the systems discerned by Netherly and others on the basis of colonial documents. Although other scholars have pondered the traces that Andean dual organization may have left on architectural configurations, few of their studies are considered, except for work by Zuidema, Murra, and their students. Readers might want to consult Hornborg's 1990 article in Folk. Large-Site Methodology is well organized, clearly written, and usefully illustrated with only a few proofreading errors to distract readers from the flow of argument. An intermediate-level knowledge of statistics is necessary to evaluate Cavallaro's ideas, but in case the reader lacks such background, there are references to standard texts. While Cavallaro acknowledges the necessity of testing his methods on other major sites with standing buildings, only the highland Inka center of Huanaco Pampa is examined. A useful exercise would be a comparison of conclusions drawn only from the "large-site methodology" with data yielded by excavation and epigraphy at intensively studied Old World sites such as Pompeii or Persepolis. In short, Cavallaro provides stimulating ideas and some real practical help, but not the final word on methodology, dual organization, or Chimu architecture. Selevac: A Neolithic Village in Yugoslavia. RUTH TRINGHAM and DUSAN KRSTIC, editors. Monumenta Archaeologica No. 15. Institute of Archae-

Reviewed by Brad Bartel, University of North Carolina-Greensboro. This book is a final excavation report for the Late Neolithic site of Selevac, located within the Morava River valley, approximately 80 km southeast of Belgrade, in Serbia, Yugoslavia. Excavated by the coeditors between 1976 and 1978, it is one of the first systematically excavated prehistoric sites in Yugoslavia, guided by a series of problem orientations, modern sampling strategy and excavation techniques, and detailed material-culture analysis. Selevac is important for a number of reasons. The areas of the classic Neolithic Vinca culture immediately to the northwest (Sava-Danube River corridors) and to the south (upper Morava River Basin) have been studied, but nothing systematically around Selevac. The site is a village-sized site spanning approximately 600 years of occupation (5000-4400 B.C.) from the VincaTordos II phase through Vinca-Plocnik IIA in regional terminology, thus affording a look into a critical developmental farming period. The excavated houses are of wattle-and-daub construction, with a diversity and amount of material culture suitable for reliable quantitative analysis. Even after 60 years of excavation of Neolithic sites in Yugoslavia, the transition from the first farming villages of the Early Neolithic (Starcevo) to the Late Neolithic (Vinca) with its apparent discontinuity of material culture and subsistence pursuits is poorly understood. A debate still exists on the relative and absolute chronologies for the Neolithic periods, especially Vinca-Tordos and Vinca-Plocnik. Traditionally, material-culture discontinuity has been explained as a migration of new populations into the region. The Selevac research clearly demonstrates an internal mechanism for this change, with expansion of farming into new zones. It also shows intensification of production and resource utilization at the site when compared to the earlier Neolithic phase in the same general area of Yugoslavia. The site of Selevac is also a test case for changes in settlement patterning. Excavation revealed a change from more vertical superimposition and long-term occupation of settlement to that of greater abandonment and resettlement across the landscape; a change coinciding with the change from Vinca-Tordos to VincaPlocnik. This may indicate a change from horticultural activities with relatively permanent houses and shifting garden plots to an agricultural pattern of crop rotation and the use of the ard in fields with rebuilding of houses situated away from the fields. Unfortunately, the project did not excavate a sufficient horizontal exposure to warrant conclusively that this change took place, nor to warrant other assertions made by John Chapman that, for example, the two settlement and land-use phases are associated with matrilineality and patrilineality, respectfully. Also, although the coeditors make assertions about changes in food production and storage relative to the spatial location of activity areas, these associations seem tenuous relative to the small
