BOOK REVIEWS

The book is also a very interesting compilation for dating specialists as it contains many facets of each technique and includes much useful but difficult-to-find information such as a table compiling the Quaternary stratigraphies of the Alps, northern Europe, Britain, North America and China, or the concentration of 14C to non-radioactive carbon in air (about lo-‘*). From the notes at the end of the chapter we can learn how to perform a T-test, how to calculate weighted means or the g-value in ESR measurements.

The book leaves only minor points of criticism. The book certainly mirrors the activities of the Research Laboratory of Archaeology in Oxford which has its major emphasis on radiocarbon and luminescence dating and magnetostratigraphy. An important method such as U-series dating seems slightly under-represented. I personally would favour a more critical attitude by outlining the model-like character of each physical and chemical dating technique and by avoiding the term “absolute dating”.

Nevertheless, it is the best and most comprehensive book of its kind and I know at least one leading geochronologistwhogaveup hisplans towriteasimilarbookafterreadingMartinAitken’s“Science- based Dating in Archaeology”, because he could hardly imagine producing anything better.

Rainer Griin Cambridge University

New Tools from Mathematical Archaeology. Papers presented at the fifth international symposium on data management and mathematical methods in archaeology organized by Commission 4 of the UISPP. Edited by A. Voorrips and B. S. Ottaway. 1990. 126 pp. Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, Scientific Information Center.

This small collection of conference papers arises from the UISPP Commission 4 meeting held in Poland in 1989. The camera-ready copy was produced in Amsterdam but the volume was published in Poland. The result appears pretty “low-tech” for although the papers were originally laser- printed the quality of reproduction is very poor. The illustrations, in particular, suffer from a shortage of ink which is unfortunate where authors have tried to demonstrate the value of computer graphics. Nevertheless, one feels churlish to criticize this first English language publication of computer and quantitative applications from the eastern bloc, on the grounds of presentation alone, even if the editors are firmly from the west. What about the contents?

Of the authors and participants listed, 18 have Eastern European affiliations; the remaining 17 hail from Western Europe or North America.

The papers themselves are a fairly miscellaneous bunch, as one expects from most publications which arise out of conferences. They are brought together under the general theme of tools which might be useful to archaeologists. Most describe work in progress.

The first five all deal with quantitative methods. Whallon presents a new method for interpreting the results of cluster analysis. Telegin uses a similarity matrix to classify his pottery. Laxton looks at seriation and chronological ordering. Geraskova applies the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to examine Medieval sculpture from the steppes. Ihm describes various methods to analyse and present binary matrices.

Several papers then look at techniques for processing and displaying geophysical survey data. HaSek and Meiinsky compare mathematically generated models of archaeological features from geophysical survey with excavation results. Buck, Cavanagh and Litton look at image segmentation methods for the enhancement of survey data. Ottaway uses computer graphics for the display of survey and excavation data in Austria.

Other applications of computer graphics are described by Stan% who reports on Computer- vision, a computerized system for using a video camera for site recording, and Williams et al., who provide an update on how the Arkansas Archaeological Survey is using a GIS with a statistical package and data base for spatial analysis. Bell, Fletcher and Lock have applied Monte Carlo methods to check if perceived patterns in post hole distributions could have been derived by chance.

The last group of papers deal with data base and expert systems. Biro outlines the development of a data base for Hungarian hthics. Voorips provides an introduction to the application of expert systems in archaeology, and Gegerun, Pislary and Popova give a case study of the use of an expert system for the classification of Bronze Age burials.

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Despite these forays into knowledge-based systems, which perhaps demonstrate that eastern European archaeologists can be as adept as their western colleagues at jumping on the latest IT bandwagon, overall this volume has a fairly old-fashioned feel, which is not just a problem of presentation. It is always useful to have new applications published, and Voorrips and Ottaway must be congratulated for getting this out so speedily. Nevertheless, the obvious comparison must be with the papers resulting from the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) sessions on Information Technology and Communication at Venezuela, and one has to say that it is not a positive one. The WAC papers, besides representing the developing world more adequately, also seem to have something more exciting to say about the future role of computers in archaeology.

Julian Richards University of York