162 A merican A nt hropologist [59, 19.

571
A map of Norway showing Norwegian valleys and counties would have been
helpful to the non-Norwegian reader.

Tombs, Temples and Ancient Art. JOSEPH LINDENSMITH.Norman: U. of Oklahoma

Press, 1956. 349 pp., 36 plates. $5.00.
Reviewed by TATIANA Carnegie Institution of Washington
PROSKOURIAKOFF,
This book has little to say on anthropology, nor does it deal, except incidentally,
with ancient art. I t is a book of personal reminiscences by an artist who was also known
as a delightful raconteur, and who devoted his life to painting ancient sculpture and
architecture, principally in Egypt but also in the Near and the Far East and in Middle
America. He was a close friend of many eminent scholars and wealthy archeological
enthusiasts and of ten assisted them personally in excavations and discoveries. The
book is anecdotal and its chief value lies in its vivid and lively portrayal of a romantic
period in archeology, when it was still largely a personal adventure of discovery of
hidden treasures, and an unfolding of a glittering pageant of history unencumbered
by modern concerns with cultural process and problems.
Although much of the text was unfinished and has been reconstructed from the
author’s notes and journals by his wife, the book retains to an amazing degree the
stamp of Joseph Linden Smith’s personality, which combined a serious interest in
antiquity with a keen appreciation of entertaining current incident. It is very readable
and richly illustrated with photographs of ruins and of the author’s justly famous
paintings. There is an index and a bibliography; the latter, particularly on Middle
America, is rather unduly erudite for a book of such general interest.

GENERAL AND THEORETICAL

A n Znkodwlion to Social Anthropology. D. N. MAJUMDAR and T. N. MADAN.Bombay
and Calcutta: Asia Publishing House, 1956. x, 304 pp., 1 chart. $2.65.
Reviewed by ROBERTREDFIELD,The University of Chicago
The “social anthropology,” to which this book is an introduction, is elsewhere in
its pages called “cultural anthropology,” and is defined as “the study of the total
way of life of contemporary primitive man.” The authors give a t least as much atten-
tion to culture as to social structure and related concepts, and treat religion, magic, and
art as categories correlative with kinship and the family, not derivative therefrom.
Indeed, the volume includes a chapter on applied anthropology, and a summary of
views as to the linguistic and racial histories of the peoples of India. Throughout the
authors assemble in concise summaries alternating or competing theory and viewpoint.
No one theoretical position is assumed. With regard to anthropology as theory, the
Indian student receives here a syllabus, an inventory, a vade mecum. And the theories
come from the West, where they have been made.
But the facts, the illustrative materials of this textbook, are drawn preponderantly
from India. For these facts, which are not well known to many of us, we Westerners
will read this book. Were the bibliographies longer, as our interests require, we would
find here something of an introduction to India’s anthropology-at least to its subject
matter. The examples of familial institutions are mostly taken from the tribal peoples
of India, as are those with regard to religion, magic, and art. There is a chapter on
the Status of Women in (Indian) Tribal Society, a summary of the economies of such
peoples, another of explanations as to the origins of caste, and yet another on the