BOOK REVIEWS 307

dictionary habit well established. There are dictionaries of biology of course (one now in its lifth edition) but all must be constantly updated. and only good can come from thi\ new competitor. I feel “life sciences” should indicate a broader coverage than “biology”, although as the latter is here defined as “the study of living things” that may be a mis- conception. Is there a spread into medical topics, perhaps? But no. rabies. diabetes, and foot-and-mouth are not given although anatomical parts, the bones of the vertebrate skeleton. biochemical compounds and physiological processes abound. As a test of up- to-the-minuteness, I looked for sociobiology but it is not there, nor even sock/ o~,qvrr~ix-

fim or .societ>s. In fact there is nothing between SIILII\PS and sodium pump! The sub.iectb run from ua~~irrrr~~ to qwogen and most entries give far more than a definition. the examples and short expositions being very useful. There is no introductory explanation or what subjects have been selected, however, and a few words would have been helpful. I found elephants but not cuts and it took a little detective work to establish that amongst mammals only orders, and not lesser taxa, are mentioned. Cat:, comprise a mere Family, whereas elephants (and the aardvark) have the distinction of comprising their own entire orders. As exceptions, Homo and certain other related genera of disreputable and equally irascible apes are listed.

What of archaeological science? Neolithic, (appropriately up-to-date), c/mrlrochro~~-

olog~~, r-trdiomtiw trnd varre dating are all there with several references to aspects of the Plristowr~e. Pcrlwolog~~ is described but, dare I say it, not mthropology, diet. domestics-

tiorl or disecrse. For my own part, I had hoped to find zooarchueolog~~ or. failing that, even crrchneozoolog~~ but neither are mentioned so I remain with my dilemma as to which is correct. I think the archaeo-life scientist will find this dictionary very useful as long as he does not look for too much in his own specialized field.

Pc~tcl’ .Iclt~r~ll

Deciphering the Maya Script. By David Humiston Kelley. 1976. xvii +- 334 pp. 127 illustrations. University of Texas Press. fl9.25.

The alms of this important and beautifully produced book are declared in its opening sentence. Kelley sets out to present a summary of what is known about Maya writing, accompanied by a critique of the researches of other scholars and an account of his own work. He succeeds on all three counts. After an introduction to the script, and a history of the attempts to decipher it, comes a long section on the interpretation of individual glyphs. These chapters are heavy going and are strictly for specialists, but Kelley is right in maintaining that the decipherment of specific glyphs is the foundation upon which any understanding of the nature of the script must be built. Some 10 0.); of the 800 or so glyphs can be read (including most of the astronomical and calendrical ones), and from these we are beginning to understand the general principles on which the script is based.

The second half of the book is devoted to these broader issues, in particular the question of phoneticism. It has long been realized that the script contains a phonetic element, that individual hieroglyphs may stand both for the object depicted and for any homonym with the same sound but a different meaning. Beyond that, all is controversy. Some scholars, notably Eric Thompson, have asserted that this was the limit of phoneticism in Maya writing; others, for instance Yurii Knorozov, claim that the script is basically phonetic, the glyphs were often used for their sound value (usually consonant plus vowel) and were built up to form words, so that decipherment is absolutely dependent on language. Kelley has always taken this latter view, and I have never seen the case better argued. Some of his examples carry complete conviction: e.g. the juxtaposed pictures of a shield (~~~cYz/ in Yucatec Maya) and an arrangement of three glyphs whose postulated sound

304 BOOK REVIEWS

values are pa-t-ca+lu. Kelley is also right to draw attention to the value of structural analysis of long texts, the search for repeating patterns and parallelisms.

As the author admits, the book does not do full justice to work published later than the mid ’60s. This is not as serious as it sounds. There has been no subsequent breakthrough in the fields of phoneticism or structural analysis. The new developments, to which Kelley himself has made a significant contribution, have added little to our understanding of the nature of the script but a great deal to our knowledge of Maya society. The recognition in 1958 of emblem glyphs (the symbols of individual Maya sites), with the realization during the 1960s that the inscriptions contain historical as well as ritual information-two topics well covered in the book-led to a fine series of studies in applied cryptography. Starting from a few individual glyphs, Marcus, Coggins and a new generation of scholars are now beginning to reconstruct, albeit tentatively, dynastic histories, marriage alliances, con- quests, spheres of political influence and the shifting balance of power between the low- land Maya states. The epigraphers have at last come down from their ivory tower to rub shoulders with archaeologists and anthropologists, much to the benefit of all parties.

Pleistocene Rodents qf’ the British Isles. By A. J. Sutcliffe and K. Kowalski. 1976. Pp. 31-147. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Geology 27 (2), London. E7.40.

This monograph results from the growing need, since Hinton’s classic study of voles and lemmings in 1926, to evaluate further what is known of Pleistocene rodents in Britain. In the fifty years which have past, considerable advances have certainly been made in Quaternary research in this country and considerably more relevant material has now been collected. Sutcliffe and Kowalski are well qualified to take on this review. Following a brief historical introduction, there is a survey of the localities which have produced fossil rodents. There is then a substantial section dealing with the classification and distribution of British Pleistocene rodents, species by species. Finally, rodent faunas are considered at different stages of the Pleistocene, and it is demonstrated that although some patterns of change are emerging, the situation is clearly complex and it is wrong to think of any simple uniformity in Britain at any particular time. This is an important contribu- tion to the study of European fossil mammals.

D.R.B.

A Revieuj of the Family Canidae, with a Classijication by Numerical Methods. By J. Clutton-Brock, G. B. Corbet and M. Hills. 1976. Pp. 117-199. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Zoology 29 (3), London. 859.5.

Growing attention has been given in recent years to the biology of the Canidae, including the domestication of dogs. The publications reveal that there is still much to think about in relation to these species, and remarkably few detailed studies. The monograph by Juliet Clutton-Brock and colleagues not only provides additional basic data (from B.M.N.H. specimens) on the whole range of canids but usefully applies statistical methods to questions of classification. The result, after considering a total of ninety characters, is not only a careful taxonomic review of thirty-five recent species and two domestic dog breeds, but also the provision of an up to date baseline from which the micro-evolution in earlier canids might be viewed in better perspective.

D.R.B.