hriving land of plenty. To the contrary, the essays illustrate and document American-Indians as wise and prudent caretakers of a land which they understood and treated with care.
Also, the essays were collected to fill a great gap in the history of Native California societies in relation to the "paradigmatic transformation" of the study of "human adaptive systems." Those societies, for example,
are barely mentioned in a recent compendium of papers on the emergence of cultural complexity among hunter-gatherers. . . California's various rich, diverse, and carefully managed habitats supported (through the medium of an exceptionally effective extractive and storage technology) the highest population densities . . . in all of North America. . . . These sedentary population concentrations provided a necessary . . . condition for the development of . . . complex social, economic, political and religious cultural patterns (16).
These ideas form the essential points and conclusions of the book, which aims to right the historical and theoretical wrongs committed by historians and anthropologists who have directlky or indirectly demeaned the American-Indians of Native California, while inaccurately portraying the coming of Euro-Americans to Native Californians as an event whereby the land was for the first time used effectively and efficiently. The precisely opposite conclusions, argue the essayists, is true: "each of the essays . . . contributes . . . to our better . . . understanding of the subtle, complex, and efficient manner in which native people managed, maintained and effectively transformed various habitats and their constituent resources" (17-18).
For example, Bean and Lawton present ample evidence that "burning by northern California groups was a means of enhancing both plant and animal resources. . . . Deliberate extensive burning . . . had been a continuing feature . . . , not only for hunting, but to maintain desirable...