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We report recent X-ray Fluorescence analysis of samples from neighboring basalt adze production locales situated in western Tutuila, American Samoa. These data allow for the successful reassignment of source locations to locally and regionally transferred adzes with greater precision, and highlights the relevance of intraisland source analysis when addressing inter-archipelagic exchange models.

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loves and losses of Mei Ling, the cadre's daughter, are compelling but leave me skeptical about generalizing these representations beyond the urban elite. Some readers may be put off by a subtext from evolutionary biology that depicts Chinese men's and women's sexual strategizing in terms of universal differences in reproductive strategy (see, for example, pp. 325-326). The discussion of cosmetics use, for example, emphasizes sexual attractiveness to the virtual exclusion of all other aspects of cosmetics' polyvocality.The final chapter on mortuary rites is a major contribution to our understanding of northern Han and Mongol mortuary practices. The data are stellar, providing exemplary detail for an area in which such information has been scant. There are specific contributions on mourning dress and ritual, new information on soul possession and its relation to power in the domestic arena, and an interesting discussion of the fate of spirits under scientific socialism. A very rich case study of an old woman's funeral highlights the ambivalence, contradictions, and general messiness of ideology in practice as family members come to grips with different attitudes toward funeral rites and symbols appropriate to representing status, reputation, and honor.In sum this book is a must for China specialists and highly recommended for scholars of comparative ethnicity, sexuality, and mortuary ritual. It could spark useful discussion in graduate and upper-division undergraduate seminars on methods and gender.