California boasts one of the most diverse archaeologies in North America, and it is a daunting enterprise to try to get it into one volume. In 2003, the Society for California Archaeology sponsored a symposium to update California archaeology. They got some 43 scholars to participate, and this volume is the result. It is a masterpiece of scholarship that reflects the monumental changes in Golden State archaeology during the past 20 years.
Topics include searching for the first Californians, linguistic prehistory, rock art, and mitochondrial DNA studies. The authors look at marine and terrestrial environments that determine human characteristics as well as the people who occupy them. Editors Terry Jones of Cal-Polytechnic and Kathryn Klar of the University of California, Berkeley have done an outstanding job of assembling a vast store of information and making it readable and understandable to the non-expert. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in California archaeology and a model for other regions to emulate. —Mark Michel