The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan

The Rise of Civilization in East Asia: The Archaeology of China, Korea and Japan. By GINA L. BARNES. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. 288 pp. $24.95.

Buyers beware: this book is the paperback reedition of Barnes's China, Korea and Japan: The Rise of Civilization in East Asia (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993), unrevised except for its new title and two paragraphs inserted on page 15. In the first, the author thanks "scholars in China, Korea and Japan." In the second, she justifies the lack of revisions by the lack of significant new scholarship, citing Imamura Keiji's Prehistoric Japan: New Perspectives on Insular East Asia (London: UCL Press, 1996) as "the one substantive recent) text covering a large part of this field in an authoritative manner." This statement, manifestly untenable in view of the tremendous volume of new publication in all subfields of East Asian archaeology, seems to arise from an attitude of "if it isn't in English, it doesn't count." Barnes's longstanding efforts at gathering all manner of Western-language bibliographic information on East Asian archaeology and distributing it to fellow scholars-through informally circulated lists, through her East] Asian] Archaeology] Network) 'nouncements (26...