Waters has undertaken a formidable task in writing a treatise on geoarchaeology, a multifaceted field in which practitioners normally specialize on only a few facets. This is the first single-authored volume on the subject to appear since Butzer 's Environment andArchaeology (1971) and Archaeology as Human Ecology (1982), but Waters' book has a narrower scope than either of Butzer's tomes. In essence it covers only sedimentology, pedology, and landscape reconstruction, and its focus is explicitly limited to the late Quaternary Period in North America. Waters' purpose is "to present the fundamentals of geoarchaeology" (p. xix) and to "demonstrate the contributions that can be made by geoarchaeological investigations" to archaeological research (p. xxi). The book is specifically tailored to archaeologists and written so that no prior knowledge of geology is required. Moreover, it is not intended to be a "cookbook" nor a manual that would enable the reader to step into the excavation trench and become a geoarchaeologist.
As far as it goes, this is an excellent book, but many of us working in the geoarchaeological paradigm will find that it does not go nearly far enough to satisfy a broad clientele interested in understanding the potential contributions of geoarchaeology. Waters covers many aspects of sedimentology, pedology, and stratigraphy very well, especially as these pertain to landscape reconstruction, and he develops these themes in the context of case histories of a number of archaeological sites throughout North America. However, Waters' conception of geoarchaeology explicitly excludes archaeometry, which many of us consider part and parcel of the geoarchaeological paradigm. Thus, you will find in this book no discussion of numerical dating methods, the nature and provenience of artifactual raw materials, or geochemical or geophysical prospecting for sites or features. Neither will you find mention of biostratigraphic or ethnostratigraphic approaches in Waters' presentation of stratigraphic concepts. On the whole, the sedimentologic-stratigraphic-geomorphologic topics of this volume are not integrated with other approaches to site formation and the archaeological record, such as biological data, provenience studies, human impact on geological processes, and other collateral studies.
Waters begins and ends his work (Chapters 1 and 8) with discussions of the objectives of geoarchaeological research. Immediately the disparity between the scope of the field and that of the book becomes apparent. "The first and most fundamental objective," according to Waters, is placement of sites and their contents in "a relative and absolute context" by means of stratigraphic practice and absolute dating techniques (p. 7). It is astonishing, then, that all treatment of numerical dating methods is relegated to other works (p. 79). Many radiocarbon dates are cited in the text, but no discussion of the underlying principles, hazards of dating certain kinds of materials, statistical uncertainty, problems of interpolating between available dates, etc., is offered, implying a certain naivete in accepting numerical dates at face value.
The second and third objectives of geoarchaeology are understanding the "natural