One of the challenges in geoarchaeology is to stay abreast of the professional literature. Because geoarchaeologists work at the interface of at least two disciplines, there does not seem to be enough time to read the myriad of scholarly papers relevant to our research. Thus, it is worth knowing when grand syntheses are published that summarize recent research regarding specific time periods, cultures, and regions. Such publications may not be geoarchaeological in nature, but contain information essential for geoarchaeologists to apply to or frame their work.
Such is the case for The Protohistoric Pueblo World, A.D. 1275-1600, a synthesis of recent archaeological research focusing on Pueblo IV settlement patterns and social dynamics in the American Southwest. It serves as a companion publication to a previous synthesis of Pueblo III (A.D. 1150III (A.D. -1350) ) research (Adler, 1996) with both volumes sharing similar formats. The protohistoric volume focuses on the southern Colorado Plateau/Mogollon region and Rio Grande Valley, but also extends south into northern Chihuahua where Lekson (1999) has argued for strong historical and cultural ties to the 4-Corners region.
The Pueblo IV period is a time of abandonment and population aggregation in the Southwest. The editors of the volume thus selected "settlement clustering" as the analytic unit to tie the chapters together. How are Pueblo IV settlements clustered in different environmental settings? How did communities within and between settlement clusters interact socially and politically? Why did they aggregate?
The chapters of this book speak to a diversity of ways about how and why Pueblo IV settlement clusters formed and evolved. Also indicated is the fact that settlement clusters may be similar in how people are distributed on the landscape, but social interactions among and within clustered communities are quite variable. In some cases, communities within settlement clusters are closely integrated socially and politically, whereas in other cases interaction is minimal, if not competitive.
In Chapter 1, Adams and Duff provide a context for recent Pueblo IV research and the nature of changing village size and settlement clusters. They summarize an inventory of early, middle, and late Pueblo large settlements (ΟΎ 50 rooms) provided by the contributing authors and compiled in an Appendix. The trend is clear; village size increased through time as village numbers decreased. Interestingly, an economy of scale appears evident as the largest villages and clusters were the ones that tended to survive into the historic period.
The next 12 chapters are organized geographically, with each chapter focusing on a specific region. Chapters 2 through 6 present research from the eastern Pueblo area. In Chapter 2, Fowles provides an overview of the relationships between Tewa and northern Tewa settlements in the Chama and Taos areas of northern New Mexico. Here, settlement clusters do not necessarily mean social and economic cooperation. Instead, there was distinct intracluster competition between Tewa communities, a pattern seen in other regions. In Chapter 3, Snead, Creamer, and Van Zandt discuss settlement clusters or "districts" in the northern Rio Grande region that appear to have different reasons for population aggregation. For example, settlement clusters in the Galisteo Basin appear to be related to the presence of lead minerals necessary for the production of an important commodity, glazeware, whereas population aggregation in Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier National Monument appears related to defense against external threats. Eckert and Cordell (Chapter 4) focus on settlement patterns in the Albuquerque, Cochiti, and lower Rio Puerco districts. They limit the term "clusters" to spatially aggregated settlements that were contemporaneous and have unequiv-