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The Savannah River Chiefdoms. Political Change in the Late Prehistoric Southeast. David G. Anderson. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 1994. xvii + 459 pp., figures, tables, references cited, index. $29.95 (paper).

and community planning of each subphase is explained and the artifactual assemblage is seriated and quantified in six general categories with relevant detail for special classes and subsets. Chapter 7 is given over to reconstruction of the processes and events of political consolidation. Here the data of previous chapters are brought together in the theoretical framework presented in the early chapters. A thread of continuity with many previous Cahokia studies is the emphasis on elite social classes or even elite personages, although as individuals they are virtually unknown. As the title implies, the "Ascent of Chiefs" is a top-down view of the rise of elite subgroups and how they established their control of society during about four or five generations. Perhaps it is ironic that hundreds of mundane households in the American Bottom have been excavated and analyzed during the last 35 years, yet the evidence of their families' many lives is so often used to tell the story of their few elite counterparts. This is a good book. It is well-designed, thoroughly edited, and reasonably priced. Included are 25 maps, 14 tables, 26 data charts, 6 artifact illustrations, 4 illustrations of theoretical models, and a chronology chart showing radiocarbon and calibrated years. All are done well. It is packaged in a suitable 6-x-9-inch format with cover art by the author. Pauketat has set a benchmark for future synthetic treatments in the region. By concentrating on the processes and mechanisms employed by the elite during the transition from simple to complex chiefdoms, he leaves the field open for treatments of other aspects of the life and times of Cahokia's polity. "Ascent of Chiefs" stands as a welcome challenge to address complimentary issues in a comparable fashion.