Jon M. Erlandson

Writing a book for a general audience, I wish the authors had focused more on the interpretations of the excavations than on the excavations themselves. The researchers had some good thesis ideas tucked into the book: for instance, the way the Chumash were able to develop a complex society over the course of thousands of years with very little lasting damage to their landbase, whereas Europeans brought many species to local extinction within decades of arrival.

I can understand why, as archaeologists, the authors focused instead on the canyon they love and worked with. And maybe the canyon does deserve a book. But by telling the canyon's history as a series of facts about what happened there, without really pulling them together in the form of a cohesive narrative, and brushing over the narratives their research did unveil, they have done their readers a disfavor. All the same, there is a good book hidden away in here, if you're willing to look for it.… (altro)