Abstract
THE first two volumes of this Work, dealing with the marginal tribes and the Andean civilizations, were introduced in Nature, Nov. 30, 1946, p. 769. Those now under review cover vast areas in eastern and northern South America, besides the West Indies and most of Central America south of Mexico. These regions were more sparsely covered by published information even than those dealt with in the first two volumes, so their preparation has involved a great deal of research, one result of which was to show that the arrangement of sub-areas planned for vol. 3 was largely artificial, though it was too late to alter it, and that much of the information on Colombia in vol. 2 might more properly have been included in vol. 4. The editor points out that the fragmentary nature of the information about many of the tribes treated in vol. 3 has resulted in prolixity rather than in brevity, since it has forced authors to let original accounts speak for themselves, retaining much detail which may be unimportant, and has prevented them from making reliable summaries of the basic features. This is not to say that these volumes are less valuable than their predecessors or any less necessary to students of South American archæology and ethnology ; in fact, they represent, if anything, a greater advance on our previous knowledge about the areas they deal with.
Handbook of South American Indians
Edited by Julian H. Steward. (Smithsonian Institution: Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 143.) Vol. 3: The Tropical Forest Tribes. Pp. xxvi+986+126 plates. Vol. 4: The Circum-Caribbean Tribes. Pp. xx+609+98 plates. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1948.) n.p.
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BUSHNELL, G. Handbook of South American Indians. Nature 162, 908 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162908a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162908a0