plant associations" (38). Documentation for such claims goes back as far as 1602 (38).
Anderson writes that the American-Indians in California developed a relationship with the land based on wise and pragmatic tenets such as "The quantity taken does not exceed the biological capacity of the plant population to regenerate or recover" and "Taboos, codes, or other social constraints are in place to discourage depletion or overexploitation and avoid waste---thus reinforcing conservation-minded behaviors" (170).
King argues convincingly, with "ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data" (279), that the use of wood as a fuel resource by the Chumash and Yokuts Indians of southcentral California was sophisticated, efficient, and contributed in a number of ways to a successful pattern of land management.
The essays are all carefully presented and documented, and conclusions are drawn cautiously and with scientific precision. Each essay deals with detai
...