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Trincheras Sites in Time, Space, and Society.

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TRINCHERAS SITES IN TIME, SPACE, AND SOCIETY. Edited by SUZANNE K. FISH, PAUL R. FISH, and M. ELISA VILLALPANDO.xii and 328 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2008. $55.95 (cloth), isbn 9780816525409.

This inaugural volume of the Amerind Studies in Archacology should be of interest to geographers concerned with hisotrical themes in the nature-society tradition. In no small way this is because some major geographical figures, including Ellsworth Huntington and Carl Sauer, pioneered studies of cerros de trincheras (terraced hills) in the Desert Southwest of the United States and adjacent northwestern Mexico.

First identified by scholars around 1900, these mostly conical volcanic peaks are conspicuous landforms in the southern part of the Basin and Range Physiographic Province. Early investigations were little more than superficial site visits that generated more heat than light. Straightaway scholars began arguing the functions of the so-called terraces or walls. Some claimed that they were agricultural and vestigial evidence of earlier...

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