Symonds, J.

English

International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion online publications

UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)[Review of: Nan A.Rothschild and D. diZerega Wall (2014) The Archaeology ofAmerican Cities Gainesville]Symonds, J.DOI10.1086/691744Publication date2017Document VersionFinal published versionPublished inJournal of Anthropological ResearchLink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Symonds, J. (2017). [Review of: Nan A.Rothschild and D. diZerega Wall (2014) TheArchaeology of American Cities Gainesville]. Journal of Anthropological Research , 73(2).https://doi.org/10.1086/691744General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:09 Mar 2023the clarity of the book’s theoretical goal, taking the sting out of the more pointed cri-tiques and uniting the chapters into a more cohesive and sustained treatise. The booksucceeds at providing the reader a historical perspective on evolutionary thought in an-thropology as expressed through the theoretical significance of hunter-gatherers andprovides a strong advocate for the explanatory potential of neo-Darwinian theory dem-onstrated through hunter-gatherer anthropology and archaeology.NICOLE M. WAGUESPACK, University of WyomingThe Archaeology of American Cities. Nan A. Rothschild and Diana diZeregaWall. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2014, 250 pp.$69.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8130-4972-4.I was standing in a conference book room in Baltimore perusing the latest titles fromtheUniversity Press of Florida when an American colleague breezed by, saying, “Amer-ican Experience, huh? I can shoot you and rob you, if you like. . . .” But placing thisdark New Jersey humor to one side, American Experience in Archaeological Perspec-tive is shaping up to be a fine series, and to his credit the series editor, Michael S.Nassaney, has attracted contributions from some of the very best American academicarchaeologists.In The Archaeology of American Cities, Nan A. Rothschild and Diana diZerega Wallsurvey more than three decades of American urban archaeology and provide a compre-hensive and engaging synthesis of the field. Moving out from their early experience ofdigging at the Stadt Huys Block in the Wall Street district of Manhattan in the late1970s, they show how the passing of federal and state environmental and historic siteslegislation and the subsequent growth of cultural resource management (CRM) andcontract archaeology have enabled urban archaeology to emerge as a vibrant subfieldof North American archaeology.Rothschild and Wall have no doubt about the importance of studying cities, sug-gesting that the city is “arguably the most significant of human inventions” (p. 1). Intheir view, archaeology has a special ability to study cities at both macro and microscales of analysis. Hence, at one level it is possible to view the plan and layout of acity as if from the top of a skyscraper, with the macro perspective of Michel de Cer-teau, or alternatively, human interactions may be glimpsed in passing at street levelwith the micro perspective of Walter Benjamin’s flaneur (p. 9). In their endeavorsto find links between the spatial and the social aspects of city life, Rothschild andWalldraw on the theories of Marxist social scientists, such as Henri Lefebvre and DavidHarvey, but ultimately this book is a celebration of how the techniques employed by292 | JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH SUMMER 2017This content downloaded from 145.018.109.103 on July 03, 2018 04:32:58 AMAll use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).historical archaeologists can create “a richly nuanced picture of urban lives and places”(p. 1).North American cities are comparatively recent phenomena, but it is possible tolook beyond the ubiquitous grid plans to see a wealth of historical influences whichhave shaped their character and form. Obvious differences relate to the date of theirestablishment, and how and why different European powers were motivated to createcities, and very real differences are apparent between early Spanish, French, Dutch,and English foundations. In the seventeenth century, European Enlightenment ide-ologies led to the creation of baroque cities, such as St. Mary’s City, Annapolis, andWashington, and in these places mercantile capitalists moved away from the rigidformality of grids so that avenues converged on the centers of religious and politicalpower (p. 48). Other types of city discussed include those with a utopian landscape,such as Bethabara, Bethania, and Salem, settled by eighteenth-century Moravian im-migrants in North Carolina, andwestern urban landscapes, such as Tucson, which orig-inated as a Spanish mission based on agriculture and ranching, and Phoenix, whichonly emerged in the 1860s as a mining supply town. Finally, there are the ideal citiesof the nineteenth century such as Chicago, and San Francisco, where “a new conscious-ness of topographical, aesthetic, and public health issues” led to improved public ame-nities such as paved streets, sewers, parks, and transport systems (p. 52).Rothschild and Wall are renowned anthropological archaeologists, and movingbeyond their consideration of the “city as artifact” they make full use of the wealth ofartifactual material, and also human remains, that have been unearthed in Americancities to extend their investigations into issues of race, ethnicity, class, and gender. Itis here, in my view that the book makes its strongest contribution, probing into theotherwise largely undocumented lives of African slaves, Chinese laundry workers, andthe successive waves of European immigrants who hoped for a better life as they filedthrough Ellis Island.In conclusion, I can say that this is an enjoyable and highly informative book. Theseven chapters and conclusion are packed with information and succeed in synthesiz-ing and making sense of a staggering amount of data. The style of writing is plain, butauthoritative, and avoids the use of jargon. I can certainly recommend this volume asan ideal undergraduate textbook for archaeologists and indeed other social scientistswith an interest in city life.JAMES SYMONDS, University of AmsterdamBOOK REVIEWS | 293This content downloaded from 145.018.109.103 on July 03, 2018 04:32:58 AMAll use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

[Review of: Nan A.Rothschild and D. diZerega Wall (2014) The Archaeology of American Cities Gainesville]

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[Review of: Nan A.Rothschild and D. diZerega Wall (2014) The Archaeology of American Cities Gainesville]

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