Archaeology in the USSR. A. L. Mongait. Translated and adapted by M. W. Thompson. Penguin Books, Baltimore, Md., 1961. 320 pp. Illus. $1.45. The Russian original of this work is authoritative both as a document of what Soviet archeology is like and as a description of its findings down to the early 1950's. It has been reviewed elsewhere [American Anthropologist 59, No. 1, 183 (1957)] , and critical comments by the translator are included in the Pelican edition. Mongait's volume is an excellent

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... ynthesis. Its principal faults are nationalistic bias and bombast and an almost total lack of concern with concepts and methods (as opposed to techniques). This latter failure is frequent in Soviet archeological writings and probably stems from a desire to avoid "formalism"-that is, a preoccupation with problems seemingly far removed from the ultimate objective, in this case "the proper understanding of historical development." Thompson's translation, while not always elegant or even idiomatic, has the great merit of always being clear in meaning. The translator's foreword (pages 15-31) explains the conception of the book, provides environmental and ethnographic information on the Soviet Union, and outlines the growth of archeology in Russia since prerevolutionary times. Parenthetical remarks by the translator within the text are also, for the most part, helpful, though a few seem trivial and unnecessary. In dealing with the eternal and vexing problem of finding the correct nominatives of Russian proper names (often present in the original only in declined or adjectival forms), Thompson did not always look hard enough. In addition, some misrenderings-such as Kazakhistan, Khvoika, Varakhsh, and Saltov (for Kazakhstan, Khvoiko, Varakhsha, and Saltovo)-can be explained only by carelessness, since the correct unmodified forms occur in the Russian original. As stated in Thompson's foreword, this is not a complete translation. Omissions include politically motivated passages, enough of which have been retained, however, to preserve the flavor Russian Prehistory Archaeology in the USSR. A. L. Mongait. Translated and adapted by M. W. Thompson. Penguin Books, Baltimore, Md., 1961. 320 pp. Illus. $1.45.