Book reviews

CHINA

SOW‐THENG LEONG. Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History: Hakkas, Pengmin, and their Neighbors. Tim Wright, ed., G. William Skinner, Maps and introduction. Illustrations, maps, tables, index, character list. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. xxiii, 236 pp. A$69.95, hardcover.

BONNIE S. McDOUGALL and KAM LOUIE. The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century. London: Hurst, 1997; Gosford: Bushbooks, 1998. Acknowledgments, introduction, further reading, glossary, index, vi, 504 pp. A$39.95, paper.

XIAOBO LU and ELIZABETH J. PERRY (eds). Danwei: the Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective . Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 270 pp. US$72.95, hardcover; US$34.95, paper.

JAPAN, KOREA

SYDNEY GIFFARD. Japan Among the Powers, 1890–1990. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, 1997. xxii, 218 pp. Abbreviations, introduction, author's note, glossary, index. US$35.00, hardcover; US$15.00, paper.

KATHERINE H. S. MOON. Sex Among Allies: military Prostitution in U.S.‐Korea Relations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. xiii, 240 pp. Preface, acknowledgments, abbreviations, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. US$47.50, hardcover; US$16.50, paper.

SOUTH ASIA

JAMAL J. ELLAS (trans and intro). Death Before Dying. The Sufi Poems of Sultan Bahu. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 145 pp. Acknowledgments, introduction, bibliography, index of first lines. US$45.00, hardcover; US$14.95, paper.

AJIT K. NEOGY. Decolonization of French India: liberation Movement and Indo‐French Relations 1947–1954. Pondicherry: French Institute of Pondicherry, 1997. xxviii, 299 pp. Foreword, preface, endnotes, appendixes, bibliography, index, resume. US$37.00, paper.

SURESHCHANDRA SHUKLA and REHKLA KAUL (eds). Education, Development and Underdevelopment. New Delhi: Sage, 1998. US$39.95, hardcover.

EMMA TARLO. Clothing Matters: dress and Identity in India London: Hurst & Company, 1996. xxi, 360 pp. Illustrations. £40.00, hardcover; £19.95, paper.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

KEVIN Y. L. TAN and LAM PENG ER (eds). Managing Political Change in Singapore. London: Routledge, 1997. xii, 228 pp. £45.00, hardcover.

SHARIFAH ZALEHA SYED HASSAN and SVEN CEDERROTH. Managing Marital Disputes in Malaysia: Islamic Mediators and Conflict Resolution in the Syariah Courts. £40.00, hardcover; £15.99, paper.

KEVIN HEWISON (ed). Political Change in Thailand: democracy and Participation. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. xv, 301 pp. US$29.99, paper.

ANN KUMAR. Java and Modern Europe: ambiguous Encounters. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997. viii, 472 pp. US$52.00, hardcover.

MARTIN STUART‐FOX. A History of Laos. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997. A$80.00, hardcover; A$24.95, paper.

MARTIN STUART‐FOX. The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang: rise and Decline. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1998. A$22.50, paper.     

Reconceptualizing Resistance in the Historical Archaeology of the British Isles: An Editorial

The present resonates with the harmonics of past events. Our archaeologies, because they deal with the everyday materiality of life, should not neglect to concern themselves with the domination of past people, since many similar forms of oppression persist. Moreover, we should consider the resistance to such domination. Rather than seeing resistance as simply reactive a problem which has generated much criticism—we can reconceptualize it to encompass a more nuanced understanding of the volition and agency of people in inferior positions of power. This lends new strength to the role of archaeologists in representing historical narratives of resistance.     

Constantine and the Bishop: The Roman Church in the Early Fourth Century

When Constantine first entered Rome after his defeat of Maxentius in October 312, he encountered a rich and complex Christian community and a bishop whose position was precarious. Centuries of growth and a long religious peace had resulted in the development of a large number of locally based communities in Rome with their own centres of worship - the tituli. Constantine needed to convince these communities of his bona fides as a Christian emperor. The bishop of Rome, Miltiades, was the ruler of a relatively newly unified see, recently fractured by persecution and controversy. Miltiades' relative weakness was to Constantine's political advantage, especially since it made him eager to receive the vast ocean of generosity which Constantine began to pour into the Roman Church. The particular and immediate beneficiary of this generosity was the bishop, who gained a vast and lavishly appointed cathedral, and a palace to go with it.     

Sickle blade life-history and the transition to agriculture: an early Neolithic case study from Southwest Asia

In Southwest Asia, sickle blades first appear early in the sequence of the transition to agriculture. In the past, detailed qualitative research on silica bearing blade stone tools focus on the characterization of use-wear traces such as polish types and accrual rates. In this paper we approach the study of sickle blades slightly different, choosing to examine tool life-history by developing a method to quantitatively estimate harvesting intensity. The method centers on an experiment of cutting cereal stalks and measuring stone blade edge thickness under a scanning electron microscope as a proxy for cutting time. We end with regressing the experimental results to provide an estimation of how intensively archaeological sickle blades recovered from the site of Dhra’, Jordan were used for harvesting. The results, while preliminary, enable an initial interpretation of sickle blades as important tools with long use-life histories during the early Neolithic in the Southern Levant.     

Feasting at Marj Rabba,An Early Chalcolithic Site in the Galilee

Feasting is a common part of human culture in the present and past that can serve a variety of roles such as creating and maintaining social identities within and between social groups. In zooarchaeology, feasting evidence, rather than the accumulated and mixed refuse from long‐term consumption, often gives us some of the only data from individual events at a site. A cattle bone refuse pit at the site of Marj Rabba, Israel, provides evidence for feasting from the early Chalcolithic (c.4500–3600 BC) in the southern Levant. The presence of cattle feasts at Marj Rabba provides a glimpse of cultural practices in this critical transitional period that may mirror practices from earlier periods.