Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo & Renee M. Bonzani. San Jacinto 1: A Historical Ecological Approach to an Archaic Site in Colombia.

AUGUSTO OYUELA-CAYCEDO & RENEE M. BONZANI. San Jacinto 1: A Historical Ecological Approach to an Archaic Site in Colombia. xx+222 pages, 55 illustrations, 28 tables. 2005. Tuscaloosa (AL): The University of Alabama Press; 0-8173-5184-1 paperback $29.95.

By the early 1990s, archaeologists became aware of a new site with very early pottery located in the wooded savannahs along the San Jacinto drainage in Colombia. San Jacinto-1 came to be known as a special-purpose Archaic site exhibiting the second earliest known pottery assemblage in the New World, firmly dated to between 6940-5780 cal. BP (2[sigma]). Only Taperinha and Caverna de Pedra Pintada in the Lower Amazon in Brazil had yielded earlier dates (7500 cal. BP). The excavations at San Jacinto-1 formed the basis for Oyuela-Caycedo and Bonzani's PhD dissertations in 1993 and 1995. The publication of San Jacinto 1 promises an improved synthesis of both dissertations, recast within an historical ecological approach, and provides additional insights into the significance of the site. It will undoubtedly and deservedly bring it to the attention of a broader audience, stimulating further discussion on the origins of pottery, sedentism, and the all-important transition from hunting and gathering to incipient agriculture. These are research questions that transcend the interests of Colombian or even South American archaeology.

San Jacinto-1's pottery style belongs to the earliest manifestations of a broad 'Hormigoid' ceramic tradition; this tradition includes sites located in a variety of environmental settings throughout what was once known as the Intermediate Area (parts of Ecuador, Panama, Colombia and Western Venezuela).

By the late 1970s, conventional wisdom had it that most 'Hormigoid' sites represented sedentary settlements, a subsistence economy based on root-crop agriculture, and its contingent development, pottery. These elements were then largely considered co-dependent rather than independent variables. The assumption was that ring-shaped, deeply buried, dense middens (e.g. Puerto Hormiga and Monsu) were the result of permanent residence, and that the specialised plant processing tools (lithics) and ceramics had developed as a result of sedentism and agricultural production focused on tuberous plants. Hunting animals and gathering wild plants were nevertheless acknowledged as still crucial sources of calories.

Interestingly, in the late 1950s the lone voice of Gordon R. Willey (1958, in American Antiquity 23[4]: 353-78), had proposed that hunter-fisher and gatherer groups, perhaps with incipient cultivation (mainly of wild plants), relative residential stability, and pottery production, marked an early pre- or proto-agricultural ceramic horizon in the Intermediate Area. By the 1970s Willey's thesis was essentially forgotten (not cited by Oyuela-Caycedo & Bonzani). By the mid-1980s excavations at various sites in South America (Taperinha-Paituna phase and Mina tradition sites in Brazil, Alaka phase sites in Guyana, Monagrillo-related sites in Panama) showed that Willey's thesis had some merit: Archaic sites with pottery were neither limited to the Intermediate Area nor anomalous. However, research on 'Hormigoid' sites had yet to be specifically designed to test Willey's proposition. San Jacinto 1 is the first book on Hormigoid tradition sites to provide analytical depth and high-resolution data to enable a detailed consideration of the perennial questions regarding the transition from nomadism to sedentism and from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies.

The book is well written and illustrated, with quantitative data in numerous tables and graphics. It is divided into six chapters, starting with a presentation of the history of investigations, the core questions and the (modern) environmental setting (Chapter 1); the authors then discuss the theoretical framework underpinning the analysis, and formulate six testable hypotheses (Chapter 2); site stratigraphy and cultural features follow (Chapter 3); analyses of pottery, lithics, the invertebrate fauna (molluscs) and botanical remains form the 'meat' of the book (Chapters 4 and 5); a succinct discussion of the broader implications of San Jacinto-1 concludes the book (Chapter 6). There are also two useful appendices with details of stratigraphy and soil chemistry, The bibliography (to 2003) covers a broad range of sources, particularly Colombian. One drawback is that none of the radiocarbon dates cited are calibrated (Tables 1.1, 1.4) forcing the reader to do so (as I have done here; see table in the Project Gallery at http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/oliver).

The authors demonstrate that San Jacinto-1 is not a nucleated village or hamlet, inhabited by farmers year-round, as was once assumed for sites bearing 'Hormigoid' pottery. They convincingly argue that the people of San Jacinto-1 fit much better the profile of 'small groups of people who moved on a seasonal basis within a limited territorial range', exploiting resources within a '10km radius', showing the 'beginnings of intensive food processing and seasonally specialized activities on the floodplain and adjacent wooded savannas' (p. 144). The site is interpreted as a specialised logistical locale rather than a residential camp, occupied by Archaic collectors of mainly seeds, grasses ([C.sub.3] plants) and molluscs. The archaeobotanical remains confirm that between 4900-3500 cal. BC (2[sigma]) this wooded-savannah site was a locus of plant and mollusc processing activities between October and March. All of the use-wear and formal analyses of the lithic implements agree with a subsistence focus on collecting and processing [C.sub.3] plants. The tight association between fire-cracked rocks and the 112 earth-ovens suggest that food was cooked with heated rocks. The differential distribution of pottery versus earth ovens and fire-cracked rocks supports the authors' conclusion that ceramic vessels were not used for cooking, but were more likely to have been used to serve food or liquids. I agree that, in this case, the adoption of pottery technology may have served to intensify social relations (food sharing, presentation, consumption; see pp. 157-63) rather than to process and cook foodstuffs.

The book's title may be a bit misleading: yes, this is a book about history and ecology, but it is not framed within what most understand as Historical Ecology, as discussed by Balee, Crumley and others. The authors' models and hypotheses (pp. 48-9, Chapter 6) emerge from the work of Woodburn, Testart and, most particularly, Lewis Binford (p. 147). This is not to say that a book written from a Historical Ecology perspective would not come to similar conclusions; but the possibility that before 4900 cal. BC the savannah landscape was not as pristine as the authors seem to imply may perhaps deserve greater attention.

One concern I have is that the predictive model, based on Binford's forager-gatherer theory, turns out to be so perfect a match for the San Jacinto-1 data. I think that the absence of vertebrate fauna was insufficiently addressed, leaving the impression that meat processing never took place at this site. It is still possible that this activity occurred in an unexcavated area within or adjacent to the site. Further, as Manuel Arroyo-Kalin pointed out to me, the high phosphate level (Appendix 2: levels 9-13) raises suspicions that microscopic bones, such as small fish bones, may have been missed. This would make sense: if people processed plants and molluscs for five months every year, one would expect the occasional fish or meat snack, unless the residential camp was very close by (San Jacinto-2?).

It is curious that not a single archaeobotanical specimen was a domesticated plant and that palm seeds and rhizomes were absent from the record. Commenting on earlier reports by the authors, Piperno & Pearsall (1998, in The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neo-tropics: 285) were sceptical of their claim for an exclusively wild grass-seed and mollusc processing site; they point out that 'food production was underway in Colombia [and Panama] long before S[an]J[acinto]-1' came into existence, judging it a 'very expensive strategy', 'unlikely to have been the sole subsistence focus, when less costly methods of food procurement were almost certainly available'. Unfortunately, the authors do not directly address this critique. Perhaps the application of starch residue analysis on a suite of plant processing tools may yet yield a broader range of cultivated (wild and domesticated) plants.

It is implicit that the collectors from San Jacinto-1 had primary residential base camps, yet to be excavated, somewhere in the region. Given the 1160 year span, there ought to be many. Would these residential camps be like the more permanent-looking, ring-shaped mounded midden settlements noted for other 'Hormigoid' tradition sites such as Puerto Chacho, Monsfi? Sadly, as the authors note (pp. xvi-xviii), the violent and dangerous political situation in the region has prevented expanding archaeological investigations further.

JOSE R. OLIVER

Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK