Obsidian Dates IV: A Compendium of the Obsidian Hydration Determinations Made at the UCLA Obsidian Hydration Laboratory. Clement W. Meighan and Janet L. Scalise, eds. Los Angeles: University of California Institute of Archaeology Monograph XXIX, 1988, xi + 511 pp., $12.75 (paper).

This paper reports a study of geologic/hydrologic environmental association in the central Sierra Nevada and corresponding implications for prehistoric settlement patterning. Archaeological data suggest that native American populations in parts of the central Sierra Nevada situated most settlements along perennial steams and at midslope localities along the exposed contact between two superimposed geologic units: Pliocene volcanics resting atop Mesozoic granitic rocks of the Sierra Nevada batholith. Groundwater emerges as springs and stream flow along, or just downslope from, the contact. Above this geological nonconformity groundwater is not reliable year round. Thus, knowledge of the approximate location of the geological nonconformity effectively alerts the archaeologist to an environmental zone in which water sources (and sites) are likely to occur.

Archaeological Excavations at CA-SFR-113, the Market Street Shell Midden, San Francisco, California Allen G. Pastron and Michael R. Walsh. Salinas, CA.: Coyote Press Archives of California Prehistory No. 25, 1988, vi + 91 pp., 10 figs., 7 tables, 5 appendices, $ 7.45 (paper)

The Archaeology of Two Northern California Sites. Excavations at the Patrick Site (4-Butte-l by Joseph Chartkoff and Kerry Chartkoff, and The Archaeology of the Hackney Site, Mariposa County, California by Delmer E. Sanburg, Jr. and F. K. Mulligan. University of California, Los Angeles Institute of Archeology, Monograph 22, 1983, 92 pp., maps, photos, tables, references, $8.00 (paper).

The Ohlone Past and Present: Native Americans of the San Francisco Bay Region. Compiled and edited by Lowell John Bean. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 42, 1994, xxxii -b 373 pp., 44 figs., 26 tables, bibliographies, $29.95 (hard cover), $22.95 (paper).

Several very large modified and unmodified pieces of obsidian have been recovered separately from and near archaeological sites on the Pineridge Ranger District, Sierra National Forest, Fresno County, California (Fig. 1). The discovery of these specimens, weighing up to 7 kg., on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada suggests that bulky, minimally reduced obsidian raw material and cores were a regular part of the prehistoric obsidian exchange inventory. Current lithic technology models incorporating a paradigm that emphasizes efficiency in resource and artifact procurement, production, distribution, and exchange may not adequately characterize trans-Sierran prehistoric lithic production systems. This paper describes the subject artifacts and their dating, and discusses the finds vis-a-vis models of obsidian artifact production and exchange in the western Great Basin and southern Sierra Nevada.

Diachronic Variability in Obsidian Procurement Patterns in Northeastern California and Southcentral Oregon Richard E. Hughes. Berkeley: University of California Publications in Anthropology, Vol. 17, 1986, 429 pp., figures, tables, appendices, references, $35.00 (paper).