Vanishing River: Landscapes and Lives of the Lower Verde Valley. The Lower Verde Archaeological Project.

Darvill, Timothy

STEPHANIE WHITTLESEY, RICHARD CIOLEK-TORRELLO & JEFFREY H. ALTSCHUL (ed.). xxxiv+824 pages, 160 figures, 37 plates, 99 tables, CD. 1998. Tucson (AZ): SRI Press/University of Arizona Press; 1-879442-906 hardback plus CD $85.

It is hard to know where to start with a review of this publication. Ostensibly it is a report on a relatively routine, albeit large-scale, salvage excavation project prompted by the need to renew a series of dams on the Verde River in Arizona. The work was commissioned by the US Bureau of Reclamation and carried out by Statistical Research Inc. In all, 19 sites within the Area of Potential Effect (APE) were subject to full excavation, large areas of surrounding countryside were surveyed, and ethnohistory and material remains studied. The results of the project, as the authors suggest (p. 15), have certainly 'provided an unparalleled opportunity to study the prehistory of a virtually unknown part of central Arizona and to place it within the larger, regional Transition Zone context'. But both the Project itself, and its publication, are much more important than this for two reasons: the innovative application of post-processual approaches to landscape archaeology in the context of a development-prompted commercial project, and the experimental use of state-of-the-art information technology for the communication of the results to a wide public.

On both sides of the Atlantic, landscape archaeology is currently one of the most dynamic branches of the discipline. Increasingly, the positivist and processual approaches to landscape history, unfolded mainly in terms of physical development and culture-sequence, are being replaced by the post-processual focus on social action and the notion that landscapes are socially constructed through the creation of meanings which are then applied to places, spaces and things. Such approaches have been used in research archaeology for some years, but the Lower Verde Archaeological Project is one of the first published cases where these ideas are applied within a development-prompted project. Chapter 2 of the report, contributed by Whittlesey, sets out a detailed methodological and theoretical discussion drawing heavily on the work of Chris Tilley and emphasizing anthropological insights into the social use of space. Landscapes, Whittlesey suggests (p. 23) 'are at base cognitively constituted, representing material symbols of thought and the social order: landscapes are culturally constructed; the land is not'. All good stuff. But the problem that post-processual landscape archaeologists are regularly faced with is that of finding a set of field methodologies with which to follow up their new lines of inquiry.

What Chris Taylor once called 'total archaeology' became the methodology of landscape history, but nothing has yet emerged as a strong successor to this, even though various approaches are being developed in a research context (Tilley 1996; Darvill 1996; Bender et al. 1997). The Lower Verde Archaeological Project has got round this problem by applying relatively traditional approaches to data recovery (selective excavation and survey) and instead integrating the results with ethnohistory in order to address the set of questions and problems relating to the issue of landscape.

The key to making this work is, of course, the construction of a solid Project Design with a strong research orientation that allows knowledge to be moved forward rather than simply providing the means for accumulating more unstructured duplicate data. Here there are many lessons for European archaeologists working in the field of Archaeological Resource Management, especially those who claim (quite wrongly) thai commercial archaeology cannot make useful contributions to the systematic investigation of the past. In the Lower Verde Archaeological Project, seven research themes were defined at the start (p. 11): chronology and cultural sequence; settlement and subsistence patterns; domestic organization and site structure; cultural affiliation; lithic use and procurement; Yavapai and Apache occupation; and exchange and specialization. These are explored in chapters 5-16 of the main report, not simply as subjects for discussion but through case-studies and analyses using the sites investigated, and always with a critical use of general and middle-range theory.

Given that the Lower Verde Archaeological Project team started from a base position of having almost no detailed archaeological knowledge of the region, did the approach used succeed? The answer to this is yes, and at two levels. First, in terms of the individual research themes, major advances in understanding have been achieved for this region. In Ciolek-Torrello's review of the research design (chapter 18) he takes a processual look at the issues, providing, for example, a new chronology for the region; a fulsome discussion of cultural affiliations, population movements and the place of indigenous traditions; a review of changing architectural traditions and mortuary practices; insights into land-use systems and adaptations of the desert-zone environment; and a review of economic strategies and social organization. These are in some ways essential pieces era jigsaw puzzle that are re-arranged by Whittlesey in the final chapter to tackle the second level: landscapes and lives. In this she looks at different kinds of space - procurement space, dwelling space, ritual space - and draws on what is known of the beliefs and cosmologies of indigenous populations to help understand the social construction of space and the archaeological signatures that result. One of the enduring themes she recognizes, and the one that provides the title for the report, is the relationships between people, the land, and the Verde River.

The Lower Verde Archaeological Project was a vast undertaking. More than six years of work and a large team were involved: 73 consultants and technical advisers are listed in the report, as well as the 51 contributors identified with particular sections of text. The main printed report has over 800 pages, but in addition there is a CB containing an introductory text (10 pages) plus three further volumes of text (totalling about 640 pages, together with numerous illustrations, tables and plates covering: 1 Description of habitation and non-agricultural sites; 2 Agricultural, subsistence and environmental studies; and 3 Material culture and physical anthropology), 17 technical appendices, three extra reports, and an illustrated catalogue of artefacts associated with human remains that includes 89 colour plates. And, just in case all this is too overwhelming, the CD also contains a 10-minute summary film with pictures, music and a spoken commentary.

In a sense it is all too much simply to look at and review. The test will come when people start using this publication, because it is truly vast: an archive, report, analysis, synthesis and summary all rolled into one. Most of what is really important by way of interpretation is probably in the printed volume and in the summary film on the CD. The hard data is mainly on the CD. This, of course, begs questions about accessibility and usability in the future. As computer technology is changing so fast it is perhaps strange that this application is software-specific rather than cast in HTML which would certainly give it a longer use-life.

The CD is arranged rather like a series of books, each with chapters and pro-set pages. Indeed, there is a facility to print out the volumes, and if these were bound up they would look just like any other book. In order to read the CD, however, the user needs to have access to a fairly high-specification computer loaded with Adobe Acrobat and QuickTime software. These programmes are fairly widely bundled with computer packages these days, but they are by no means universal. To help those without the relevant software the CD contains a cut-down version of the programs for down-loading by the user in order to read the files and run the film. Everything worked very successfully when this reviewer tried it, although making the film run proved more difficult on some machines than others. Once into the text there are linked colour graphics (maps, plans, charts etc.) that can be accessed by clicking on the highlighted figure numbers embedded in the text. The same applies to bibliographic references which can be viewed while still actually in the text. Whether this is actually any quicker or easier than a conventional book is a moot point, but it certainly has novelty value. With the full version of Adobe Acrobat it is possible to use search routines to find information of potential interest.

The twin innovations of applying modern landscape theory and using CD-based publishing to supplement and complement a conventional printed format make this report something of a landmark which deserves wide circulation. Both innovations move archaeological practice forward several steps, the first through the integration of theory and field practice and the endorsement of the primacy of the Project Design; the second by demonstrating an alternative approach to publication, the full value of which only time will tell.

TIMOTHY DARVILL School of Conservation Sciences Bournemouth University

References

BENDER, B., S. HAMILTON & C. TILLEY. 1997. Leskernick: Stone Worlds; alternative narratives; nested landscapes, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63:147-78.

DARVILL, T. 1996. Billown Neolithic Landscape Project, Isle of Man, 1995. Douglas: Manx National Heritage & Bournemouth: Bournemouth University.

TILLEY, C. 1996. The power of rocks: topography and monument construction on Bedrain Moor, World Archaeology 28: 161-76.