The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 571

Book Reviews

Generally speaking, the book seems sufficiently accurate. The com-
pression of information into short chapters prevents some much needed
discussion and analysis. The author's account of the Sioux Outbreak
in Minnesota suffers by condensation. The account of attempts made
to crossbreed buffalo is too brief; and a good deal more might have
been written concerning the preservation of the species. All in all,
however, the volume does what it set out to do, and, although it adds
little that is significantly new, it is pleasing fare. If, however, this
reviewer had his "druthers" between Haines' book and Douglas
Branch's The Hunting of the Buffalo, published in 1929, he would
without hesitation choose the latter.
Burlington, Iowa PHILIP D. JORDAN
Reconstructing Prehistoric Pueblo Societies. Edited by William A.
Longacre. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970o.
Pp. ix + 243. Bibliography, index. $8.50.)
Technological inquiry has been properly the domain of American
archeology since its inception, and, since the beginning of this cen-
tury, there has been little attempt to investigate behavior not directly
manifested in stone and bone. Knowledge about the sociological and
ideological dimensions of extinct societies has been derived either
from historical documents or from speculative projection from extant
peoples to those of the past. This "information gap" has served to
isolate archaeological endeavors from those of anthropology, as well
as to align archaeology more closely with history than with the social
sciences. Reconstructing Prehistoric Pueblo Societies is an attempt to
close the "information gap" by placing sociological investigation of
extinct communities on a more acceptable foundation and, at the same
time, to justify the inclusion of archaeology within anthropology and
the social sciences. Both objectives are part of the "New American
Archaeology."
The lead articles by Longacre and James N. Hill provide the best
explanation of the tenets of the New Archaeology that I have encoun-
tered. Archaeological data are deemed susceptible to scientific inves-
tigation rather than restricted to chronicling. The deductive method
is proposed to be most useful for explanation, since induction can
lead only to empirical generalization. Culture is defined as an inter-
nally variable system of roles and statuses rather than a set of shared

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