Textbooks (?) of Archaeometry
[This article is a review of the following books on archaeometry]
Penelope A. Parkes, Current Scientific Techniques in Archaeology. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. 271 pp., US $35.00.
Hans Mommsen, Archäometrie. Neuere naturwissenschaftliche Methoden und Erfolge in der Archäologie. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1986. 304 pp., DM 38.00 (about US $21.00).
Rolf C. A. Rottländer, Einführung in die naturwissenschaftliche Methoden in der Archäologie. Tübingen: Archaeologica Venatoria, 1983. 604 pp., DM 56.00 (about US $31.00).
Patricia Phillips, ed., The Archaeologist and the Laboratory. London: Council for British Archaeology, 1985. 70 pp., £14.75 (about US $20.00).
XI. U.I.S.P.P. Congress
The Union Internationale des Sciences Prehistoriques et Protohistoriques (U.I.S.P.P.) held its Congress in Mainz, West Germany, during the first week of September 1987. This quinquennial meeting of the global organization of archaeology had been scheduled for 1986 in Southampton and London, but pressures to exclude archaeologists from South Africa and Namibia forced the U.I.S.P.P. (which is afiliated with UNESCO) to withdraw its auspices. The Southampton meeting was renamed ``The World Archaeological Congress,'' a title that is a trifle confusing, since it had lost its official status precisely because it was not open to the entire world. The official congress of the Union was moved to 1987 and to Germany.
The International Radiocarbon Data Base (IRDB)
Renée Kra, editor of Radiocarbon and a prime mover of the efforts to establish an on-line data base of radiocarbon dates (see Journal of Field Archaeology 14 [1987]: 374) gave a progress report at the Mainz Congress. She emphasized the urgency of establishing a comprehensive and readily-accessible source of dates at a time when the volume of new data is growing rapidly and the accuracy of current techniques (accelerator mass spectrometry combined with high-precision calibration curves) makes these data more valuable than ever to archaeologists.