BOOK REVIEWS 687

Chalcolithic phase of the Deccan plateau group, a period which covered a time range of approximately 3,000-3,500 years bp. The second group consists of 753 living children under 5 years of age, representing virtually complete coverage of six villages located in the vicinity of the archaeological sites. The children werc examined every six months for a period of three years with a total of 2,084 examinations recorded. Long bone ra- diographs were taken of 250 children, se- lected on the basis of consistency in growth, for comparison. Finally, data on dietary hab- its and knowledge were collected on a sub- sample of families, stratified scoioeconomi- cally within-village.

For their analysis of the growth status of the living sample, the authors used height and weight relative to the WHO reference standards reported by Jelliffe in his 1966 report. In general their results conform to what is known for similar settings: steady growth during the first year of life with a falloff relative to 75-82% of standard values, especially in weight, during and after the weaning phase. Though it is not statistically significant the nutritional status of girls is consistently below that of boys, especially among older children. The sex difference is attributed t o cultural preferences for males and supported by data from the villages studied.

Skeletal growth in the living sample was evaluated within four grades of nutritional status for weight (normal, grades I, 11, and 111 of undernutrition) and smoothed curvcs, by month, were derived for each bone. These curves provided reference data for the analy- ses of the skeletal sample, the authors work- ing “backward from bone length to pre- dicted nutritional (i.e., weight) status. Based on this approach, about 80% of the Chalco- lithic sample fall into either grades I or I1 of nutritional status, that is, over three- quarters are assessed as displaying mild-to- moderate malnutrition. This conclusion is bolstered by the existence of associated skel- etal pathologies: porotic hyperostosis, thick- ening of the diploe, and enamel hypoplasia.

There is little direct comparison on the contemporary and Chalcolithic samplcs, but it is worth observing that, from the data, it appears that growth faltering was generally similar with overall means in both groups of about 80% of standard for weight. In the matter of Harris lines, of 247 Chalcolithic long bone radiographs, lines were recorded

in 59 (23.9%), while of the living sample, 38 of 256 children (14.8%) displayed lines on one or more bones.

This monograph is rich in data and pro- vides a great deal of inforination of interest to researchers, especially those, working with skeletal samples and their level of ad- aptation to their environment, and those in- terested in comparisons between prehistoric and contemporary groups. The combination of these two groups, which seem to have con- siderable population continuity over time, is an innovative step which provides greater depths of interpretation than is often possi- ble in other places.

LITERATURE CITED Jelliffe DB (1966) The Assessment of the h’utritional

Status of the Community. Monograph #53. Geneva: World Health Organization.

FRANCIS E. JOHNSTON Department of Anthropology University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dynamics of Human Reproduction: Biology, Bi- ometry, Demography. By James W. Wood. xvi & 653 pp. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994. ($39.95 paper, $79.95 cloth).

The process of human reproduction is pre- sented in an analytical framework, and al- though each chapter deals with a specific subject, the discussion illustrates the effects of diffcrent determinants. The primary focus of this study is the causes and expressions of fertility variation: within the individual’s reproductive lifespan, among individuals in the same population and among different human populations. The author expands the focus of fertility research to include the cou- ple rather than only the woman as has been the case in the past.

The first part of the book deals with natu- ral fertility but concludes that human popu- lations reproduce at levels well below capac- ity; thus enters the discussion of proximate determinants that effect natural fertility. Twenty-five years ago, Bongaarts (1978) de- scribed fertility determinants as: proportion married, contraception, induced abortion, lactational infecundability, frequency of in- tcrcourse, sterility, spontaiieous intrauter- ine mortality, and duration of fertile period. Wood builds on these determinants, but be-

688 BOOK REVIEWS

cause the second part of his book is heavily physiological in nature, he treats the biologi- cal determinants of fertility in much greater detail and since his focus is natural fertility, he ignores deliberate, parity-specific con- trol factors.

In the second and major part of this book, Wood discusses the proximate determinants of natural fertility: ovarian cycles and the fertile period; conception, implantation, and pregnancy; fetal loss; fecundability and coital frequency; breastfeeding and postpar- tum infecundability; menarche and meno- pause; the onset of permanent sterility; and marriage and the male contribution. Whereas all the earlier chapters emphasize the reproductive processes that take place in women, the author asks whether we can fully understand fertility variations without considering the male factors. He then turns to discuss: frequency of insemination; dura- tion of the fertile period; probability of con- ception from a single insemination; fetal loss; and the effects of aging.

Having discussed systematically and in isolation the proximate determinants as bio- logical and behavorial mechanisms, Wood turns, in section three, to “the heart of the current book” (p. 511). He asks how the re- productive process works as factors in- fluence each other, and he presents a dy- namic integrative model of birth-interval components. This in fact is where future re- search must concentrate, including ques- tions regarding the influence of more remote factors that ultimately explain fertility vai-i- ations.

An appendix by Kenneth Campbell and Wood on quantitative endocrinology con- cludes the text.

James Wood has produced an informative readable book from which student and pro- fessional will profit. This study will be of particular value in courses on human biol- ogy, reproductive physiology, demography, and human sexuality. One particularly at- tractive feature for this reader is that the text is not cluttered with tables and graphs or statistical calculations. When the reader is engaged in a specific topic or engrossed in following a determining sequence, there is nothing to interrupt concentration. Every chapter concludes with a section of notes fol- lowed by figures. The latter includes figures, tables, diagrams, mathematical models, sta- tistical analyses, and related discussions. The book also contains a 50-page bibliogra-

phy permitting readers to follow up on much of the interesting material.

LITERATURE CITED Bongaarts J (197s) A framewark for analyzing the proxi-

mate determinants of fertility. Population Develop- ment Review 4:105-132

BRIAN M. DU TOIT Department of Anthropology University of Florida Gainesville, Florida

Honor Among Thieves: A Zooarchaeological Study of Neanderthal Ecology. By Mary C. Stiner. xxii + 447 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994. $69.50 (cloth).

The study of Neanderthals is in the throes of a radical and exciting transformation. The explosion of interest in these enigmatic ar- chaic humans was launched barely a decade ago when the first TL and ESR dates were obtained from sites whose age until then lay beyond the reach of radiocarbon dating (Val- ladas et al., 1987). These new techniques turned conventional wisdom on its head by demonstrating that anatomically modern human fossils associated with Mousterian stone tool assemblages from such sites as Qafzeh and Skhul in Israel substantially predated Neanderthals from nearby sites in Israel as well as in Europe. Another impetus in this transformation came from studies of mitochondria1 DNA in living human popula- tions (Cann et al., 1987). These studies sug- gested that modern humans throughout the world may all be derived from a single ances- tral source, probably in Afi-ica, a mere 150,000 or 200,000 years ago. Although pa- leoanthropologists and archaeologists re- main far from agreement concerning the po- sition ofNeanderthals in our family tree, few would disagree that refreshing new life has been breathed into a debate that began nearly a century and a half ago with the discovery of the first Neanderthal remains.

The “out-of-Africa” debate has certainly captured the lion’s share of the limelight, but there is another important and very exciting transformation taking place in Neanderthal studies. Until recently, anthropologists (par- ticularly those in the United States) have been sharply divided over the issue of whether Neanderthals possessed the mental acuity to hunt large, dangerous animals