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One of the continuing problems for students of the history of our discipline is the tendency for retrospectives to identify and discuss the same 'big names' in the field, as if these individuals were the only 'players' or 'actors' involved. Thus in Bolivia, for example, a list of prominent archaeologists working in the mid-20th century often gets limited to Europeans such as Stig Ryden and Heinz Walter, Americans such as Wendell C. Bennett and Alfred Kidder, and Bolivians such as Arturo Posnansky and Carlos Ponce Sanginés. With respect to the in-country, Bolivian contributors, then, one comes away with the impression that the baton passed rather seamlessly from Posnansky to Ponce.There is a vibrant community of young archaeologists in La Paz, Bolivia, who have started new web-sites, new journals, new advanced degree programs, and even pushed through some 'cultural resource management' legislation. Two of these scholars, Carlos Lémuz Aguirre and Claudia Rivera Casanovas, are the new editors of the recently revived journal Nuevos Aportes. The first (and for many years only) issue of Nuevos Aportes came out in 1992. There thus has been nearly a fifteen year gap between that premier issue and the current issue No. 2. Utilizing new web-technology, this journal now is wholly a web-based publication, accessible through .

Environmental Archaeology: Meaning and Purpose. Umberto Albarella. ed. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. 324 pp.Environmental Archaeology: Principles and Practice. Dena F. Dincauze. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 587 pp.Public Benefits of Archaeology. Barbara J. Little. ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. 277 pp.

The Archaeology of Drylands: Living at the Margin. Graeme Barker and David Gilbertson. eds. New York: Routledge, 2000. 372 pp.

The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas: Vol. 3: South America, part 2. Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz. eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 976 pp.

This article explores the intersection of the career of Frederic Ward Putnam with the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard to the history of U.S. archaeology between his appointment as professor in 1866 and his death in 1915. Putnam was also active in institutional developments at Chicago, Berkeley, and New York. [Keywords: Frederic Ward Putnam, U.S. archaeology, Peabody Museum]

The two editors argue in their preface to the volume that the particular sociopolitical context of Latin America has led to a regionalism not seen in North America or Europe, resulting in a unique variety of archaeology. They particularly conceive "Latin American archaeology" in this case to he only that archaeology done by individuals who are citizens of the countries of the region, and they ex­clude from consideration as being considered "Latin American archaeology" the work of foreign scholars such as North Americans and Europeans who do research in the region.

The standard works on the origins of the historical preservation movement in the United States are Hosmer's two volumes (1965, 1981) . West takes a slightly different approach in this work, using the development of four specific house museums (Mount Vemon, the Orchard House of Louisa May A1con, Monticello, and the Booker T. Washington National Monument) as foils to by which to develop more of the social context of the respective periods of formation, and the political institu­tions involved. She argues (p. xii) that "house museums are products as well as purveyors of his­ tory", that "house museums are and always have been about politics" and that as scholars we must understand that actual histories of house museums have often been superseded by "creation myths" which have evolved associated with the museums as part of the cultural politics of the context of their formation. This has clear implications for the history of archaeology, not only in terms of the context and worldview of the 1 9th century development of museum theory, but also in terns of the use of archaeology in the 20th century as part of the myth building process. The 180 pages of text developing this theme are well-documented by 70 pages of supporting notes.

This book is a very difficult work to read dispassionately, for a variety of reasons, such as difficulties the reader may have with a rather convoluted discussion of Daniel Wilson and the Scottish enlightenment, the categorization of many practicing archaeologists as "petrified puddle ducks", after a term borrowed from Waiter Taylor. and taking a leaf from Taylor, utilization of the term "critical" primarily as "criticism", so that almost no current significant practicing archaeologist in North America comes out unscathed. The term puddle ducks" was employed in several places. Perhaps the strongest usage when Kehoe states (p. 183) that "Compared to the political sophistication displayed by so many social anthropologists, mainstream American archaeologists have been petrified puddle ducks." The term "petrified puddle ducks" had a nice ring to it but I confess I did not remember the context that Taylor employed it in, so I repaired to the vol­ume to re-educate myself.

Two recent contributions (Oyuela-Caycedo 1994 and Politis 1995) to analyses of the intellectual development of archaeology in Latin America provide us with new perspectives. A theme shared by both is the perception by the authors of a need to distance the development of archaeology in Latin American countries from the overweening influence of Europe and especially U. S. archaeologists.Politis argues that U.S. influence has been tantamount to 'cultural imperialism' (1995:226). He sees U.S. archaeologists as having a history of appropriating and manipulating the knowledge of the past which ignores the local peoples own traditional perceptions of their patrimony, and argues that the U.S. perspective is designed to satisfy the needs of western scholarship but fails to enter a dialog with the legitimate concerns of the subject countries.Oyuela·Caycedo's introductory essay in his book "Nationalism and Archaeology" carries a very similar message. He faults U.S. archaeologists for failing to locate their studies in the areas social and local context, which he sees as leading the U.S. scholars to employ a model derived from "dependency theory" (1994:5), resulting in an overly simplistic perception of the context for the development of archaeological disciplines in respective Latin American countries.