This book is one of the chunkier offerings in the Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology imprint, and is intended primarily for archaeologists, geomorphologists, and palaeoecologists. The author's premise is that archaeologists working by rivers and on floodplains need to understand fluvial and alluviation processes in order to locate and excavate sites satisfactorily. To this end, Brown spends more than onethird of the text laying out the principles of floodplain evolution, sedimentation, and ecology, and the methods of their study and interpretation. Some archaeologists will find the first section rather alarming, and would be advised to keep an entry-level' textbook in geomorphology close to hand. That said, the more advanced terms and principles are well explained, and the illustrations are mostly well-chosen. There is a relatively short review of methods of alluvial geoprospecting. Perhaps the topic was just beyond the author's scope, or was considered to be relatively unimportant, as there is little detail on the particular strengths and weaknesses of the methods that are mentioned. Indeed, ground resistivity/conductivity is mentioned as a method that has the capability to penetrate significant thicknesses of alluvium' (p. 41), despite being singled out on p. 281 as less successful on deep clay-rich soils'. However, air photographs are rightly stressed as a valuable source of information on old channel courses and islands, and Brown is upbeat about the potential of airborne thermal infra-red imaging. Those of us with dodgy backs will not share his enthusiasm for a few hours with an extendable hand auger', however useful the data that augering can provide.
The second part of the book deals with applications, and reviews, often in some detail, a number of `big topics'. Amongst these is the movement of artefacts in rivers, their deposition on floodplains, and survival in ancient terraces. Examples are drawn from England, North America, and Australia, although the division of this chapter by geographical region is a little unfortunate. The Ohio river probably has more in common with the Thames than it has with Whitewater Draw, Arizona, and a discussion of process and depositional regimes could have grouped the case