Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North American Indian Oral Traditions

As an historian of the American West, I find myself in the unusualposition of writing a review of a book, written by an archaeologist,for an audience of oral historians. But Ronald J. Mason's elegantlyprovocative Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North AmericanIndian Oral Traditions cries out for interdisciplinary linkagesand understandings. Mason spent his professional years as anarchaeologist among anthropologists and is the author of thehighly acclaimed Great Lakes Archaeology (1981). In InconstantCompanions, Mason "addresses a fundamental historiographicalproblem in archaeology, history, and anthropology":