"The papers, which grew out of a 1988 Advanced Seminar at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, are all of a high quality and are all thought provoking. The theoretical diversity represented by the 10 authors, the empirical summaries of a worldwide sample of chiefly cases, and the volume's uncanny cohesiveness make this book an essential addition to the libraries of those social scientists concerned with chiefdoms or, more broadly, with the historical relationships between polity, economy, and culture....deserves high praise." American Antiquity