Review of: Two Historic Cemeteries in Crawford Co., Arkansas (by Mainfort and Davis) more

REVIEWS ensues and is followed by consideration of the extent of Paleoindian mobility. The chapter concludes with the acknowledgment that Paleoindian subsistence is highly varied and much is still to be learned through improved methods and new technologies. Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America is a significant contribution to the ever growing body of literature in Paleoindian studies. At this point, the customary statement "this work will be of use to professionals and students alike" falls far short of the actual value of the volume. Dispelling traditional perspectives of subsistence, this volume represents the first distinct effort to reveal the subsistence diversity and variation during the Paleoindian period in what has traditionally been viewed as uniform. The data and information in this volume will be a springboard for investigations that will further clarify Paleoindian adaptations and, thus, the subsequent adaptations of a continent. Two Historic Cemeteries in Crawford County, Arkan- sas. ROBERT C. MAINFORT, JR. and JAMES M. DAVIDSON (eds.). Arkansas Archeological Survey, Research Series No. 62, Fayetteville, 2006. viii + 261 pp., figs., tables, appendices, biblio. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-56349-101-X. Reviewed by Kristina Killgrove In 2001, two small historic cemeteries in Crawford County, Arkansas, were threatened by expansion of Lake Fort Smith. The Becky Wright and Eddy Ceme- teries were located less than a mile apart and were used in the latter half of the nineteenth century by the community of Frog Bayou. Excavation of these ceme- teries was undertaken to remove the human remains and personal effects for reinterment elsewhere. The authors' research goal was to integrate all the archae- ological information recovered from these two ceme- teries as well as to tackle questions about typology, chronology, and socioeconomics that have not been fully addressed in previous literature. In the seven chapters of this monograph, the authors exhaustively catalogue and interpret the artifacts, human remains, and stratigraphic clues from 26 burials. The result of this work is a window into the social context of burial in a rural community at the end of the nineteenth century. Following a short introduction (chapter 1 by Robert Mainfort and James Davidson) and a brief report on archaeo-geophysical prospection and mapping (chap- ter 2 by Jami Lockhart), chapter 3 by James Davidson, Maria Tavaszi, and Robert Mainfort presents descrip- tions of each burial in the two cemeteries. Data such as the age and sex of the deceased, artifacts associated with the burial, and the form of the grave shaft itself are presented in list form. Each burial also includes a "coffin summary" that describes the probable form of the coffin as well as an overall "burial interpretation." This method of presenting data and interpretation together is unique in reports on historic cemeteries, and the authors encourage other researchers to follow their lead. The authors' use of photographs of tombstones, excavation plans, summary, and interpretation in this chapter serves both to document two cemeteries that have now disappeared and to allow the reader to visualize and understand the graves. Chapter 4 by Peggy Lloyd and Robert Mainfort deals with the history of the Becky Wright and Eddy Cemeteries. Based on censuses, land patents, and other historical information, the people buried in these cemeteries are tracked through the years. The ways in which land ownership and life histories of the individuals in this small community intertwine are interesting and add personal details to the skeletal remains. Information collected on the poorly preserved human remains is presented in chapter 5 by Diana Wilks. For each individual, age, sex, and biological affinity were estimated, an inventory was taken, and pathologies were observed, all based on standard bioarchaeological techniques. A verbal summary of each individual is also included. At both cemeteries, " the adult sex ratio was more or less equal, although the Eddy cemetery had more subadult burials than the Becky Wright cemetery. There are some striking typographical errors in the biological and pathological terms used, as well as questionable interpretations about nonmetric traits. This chapter, however, is exhaustive, with all possible information gleaned from the fragmentary human remains. Chapter 6 constitutes the bulk of the monograph, comprising 125 pages on material culture, chronology, and socioeconomics. Davidson begins with a discus- sion of the physical grave shafts, specifically the fact that the majority of the graves at Becky Wright were vaulted. A brief history of coffins and caskets is presented, followed by hardware descriptions. The author scoured over 100 coffin catalogues and over 1,400 patents to find comparative material for mortuary hardware found at these cemeteries, including coffin handles, thumbscrews, coffin screws, escutcheons, plaques, ornaments, tacks, and viewing windows. Davidson's discussion of viewing windows deserves special mention because of his research into their chronology. The accepted date of introduction of viewing windows is 1860 based on secondary source material. Design and utility patents for elements of a . viewing window, however, were issued in 1843 and 1847, respectively. Mortuary catalogues from the 343 SOUTHEASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 26(2) WINTER 2007 nineteenth century show static viewing windows being sold in 1848 and sliding viewing windows in 1881. Even after coffin wood has decomposed, it is possible to distinguish between these types of viewing window based on the presence of a viewing window latch specific to the sliding window. Davidson further presents a typology of viewing window format based on his research at the Freedman's Cemetery in Texas. The constant references in the text to Freedman's, while informative, can at times be confusing to the reader because of the lack of contextualization of the cemetery. This chapter also deals with clothing and personal effects, most notably buttons, suspender hardware, shoes, and safety pins. Davidson reconstructs the clothing from these elements by referring to nearly 100 different period catalogues. Children were gener- ally interred in a knitted shirt, women in simple clothes such as a pullover dress, and men in shirts, pants, and suit coats. All of this material culture, presented in photographs, tables, and diagrams, contributes to the founding and closure dates for the two cemeteries. The Eddy Cemetery dates from 1873 at the earliest to the mid- to late 1890s, and the Becky Wright Cemetery dates from as early as 1854 to about 1900. The discussion of socioeconomics at the end of chapter 6 is important, even though it is overwhelmed by the bulk of the material culture analysis. Davidson argues that processual mortuary analyses of small-scale societies by Binford and Saxe in the 1970s led to problems in estimating socioeconomic factors in burials in industrialized societies. Based on his work at yet another cemetery in rural Kentucky, Davidson intro- duces a methodology for evaluating socioeconomic differences that involves computing the costs of the coffin and the tombstone to generate a relative index of wealth. Wholesale costs of coffin hardware were calculated based on mortuary catalogues, the presence of a viewing window was added to the cost, and the cubic volume of the tombstone was converted into a dollar amount. At the Eddy Cemetery, men's burials cost more than women's burials, whereas at the Becky Wright Cemetery, the women averaged a higher burial cost than the men. In both cemeteries, children's burials cost little. The monograph concludes with a final chapter summarizing the findings from these two rural cemeteries. Davidson and Mainfort take issue with the "Upland South folk cemetery type," which de- scribes the above-ground appearance of two cemeteries that were strikingly different in burial form and socioeconomic markers found below the surface. Whereas the Eddy Cemetery was a family burial plot with a conservative tradition of burial, the Becky Wright cemetery was a resting place for marginalized members of the community. A variety of historical archaeologists will find this work informative, partic- ularly those interested in rural mortuary practices and coffin hardware typologies. Bio archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast: Adaptation, Conflict and Change. DALE L. HUTCHINSON. Uni- versity Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2004. 288 pp., maps, tables, figures, appendices. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8130-2706-3. Reviewed by Murray K. Marks The first of six chapters of Bioarchaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast provides an introduction to approaching a regional and pan-regional bioarchaeological model for understanding adaptation in prehistoric Florida skele- tal series. This synthesis sets the stage for the entire volume derived from intertwined ecological themes revealing a unique maritime coastal adaptation char- acterized by a temporally pervasive environment affecting all populations with maize horticultural adoption occurring rather late in prehistory. One of the most exciting elements of the model is the ecological theme using four supporting hypotheses tested by specific skeletal and dental data sets. The first hypothesis focuses on a diet reliant upon marine plants and animals, which is tested using carbon and nitrogen isotopes (analysis by Lynette Norr) and dental enamel microwear (analysis by Mark Teaford). Hypothesis two focuses on explaining the differential pathological lesion frequencies resulting from localized resource exploitation. Here, the data sets include caries, alveolar infection, dental chipping, porotic hyperostosis, enamel hypoplasia, proliferative responses, and osteoarthritis and external acoustic exostoses. With these data sets, save exostoses, and including trauma rates, hypothesis three explores the differing nutrition and disease experience and their chronological patterning between interior and coastal populations. Hypothesis four targets the differential expression in diet, pathological lesions and behavioral alterations between males and females using the carbon and nitrogen isotopic analyses and examining the frequencies of carious lesions, alveolar infection, dental chipping, proliferative responses, osteoarthritis, external acoustic exostoses and trauma. The second chapter presents the key physiographic regions of the Florida Gulf Coast environment followed by the archaeological and culture history of the region. This rich synthesis provides the essential kernel for understanding the ecologically derived themes and the hypotheses outlined in chapter 1. This geophysical foundation is one of the highlights of the volume demonstrating the ideal setting for the evaluation and interpretation of skeletal remains. And even though 344