Once in a great while a book comes along that pulls together a wide variety of clearly written technical and conceptual papers, distilling the "best parts" of a stack of journal articles and textbooks into one volume. Goldberg, Holliday, and Ferring's edited volume Earth Sciences and Archaeology is such a book. The editors have done a masterful job collecting a complementary series of papers that address themes of problem identification, choosing methods for problem solving, and the consequences of different methods. Contributing authors also provide insights from their own experiences-an added bonus to the clearly written topical summaries. Because of the breadth and detail of its chapters, Earth Sciences and Archaeology would make an excellent text for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students. The chapters give current treatments of their topics with thorough literature reviews as well, resulting in an invaluable reference for professional archaeologists and geoarchaeologists alike.
The volume includes 17 papers grouped into six topical sections. Section I, entitled, "Background," includes two chapters that set the stage for the volume. Chapter 1, "Quaternary Geoscience in Archaeology" by Vance T. Holliday, provides a concise and relevant summary of the Quaternary from temporal, environmental, and causal viewpoints. Holliday presents a well-balanced introduction to the principles of Quaternary studies, emphasizing its inclusion as a holistic aspect of archaeology-an issue, he correctly notes, that is much neglected in introductory archaeology texts. He gives a succinct summary of the history of Quaternary studies and how its inclusive temporal divisions were established. Holliday's chapter serves to highlight critical concepts, terms, and criteria used to describe, interpret, and apply Quaternary datasets and historical contexts. In sum, his chapter gives a compelling argument for greater incorporation of Quaternary studies as a fundamental part of 21st Century archaeology. Julie K. Stein's, "A Review of Site Formation Processes and Their Relevance to Geoarchaeology" (Chapter 2), reviews studies of site formation processes and defines its associated terms. Stein raises interesting historical points about Americanist geoarchaeology's growth from a need to address site formation issues and how this worked to establish a well-visited intersection between archaeology and the earth sciences. Stein charts the historical growth of Americanist geoarchaeology as a formal and indispensable subdiscipline of archaeology through the development of concepts, terms, and analytical units inherent to site formation analysis.
Section II includes four chapters thematically grouped under the heading "Geomorphological Studies." Chapter 3, "Evaluating Causality of Landscape Change: Examples from Alluviation," by Charles Frederick, discusses the geoarchaeologist's role in defining geomorphic change within a framework of archaeological research. Frederick's chapter follows nicely from Stein's, as it deals with natural and anthropogenic causes of sedimentation and, most importantly, how each can be differentiated. Frederick gives a useful twist to the study of alluvial geoarchaeology, as he reviews how arguments regarding the origins of alluvial datasets are constructed. In Chapter 4, "Geoarchaeology in Alluvial Landscapes," C. Reid Ferring emphasizes the physical record of alluvial datasets and how they are used to interpret environmental and temporal issues. This chapter is a useful companion to Frederick's as it emphasizes the products that result from various fluvial conditions and changes. Although there is some overlap between Chapters 3 and 4, Ferring goes into greater detail on issues like facies, channel patterns, stream load, and others. His discussion of facies, alluvial architecture, and alluvial geomorphology provides a solid review of concepts and approaches used to define alluvial sedimentary environments at scales amenable to archaeological study. Chapter 5, "A Geomorphological Approach to Reconstructing Ar-