This volume contributes to the growing catalog of submerged landscape investigations by providing a detailed discussion of how GIS tools were used to create a paleolandscape model for potentially preserved archaeological site locations on the continental shelf offshore of southeastern Alaska. In her book, Monteleone provides an updated model and discussion of her 2013 dissertation at the University of New Mexico, which was one of the first attempts to rigorously model locations that would have been attractive to ancient foraging peoples in southeastern Alaska prior to those locations having been drowned by sea-level rise. Although some typographical errors throughout the text are minor distractions, many figures are in color, and the full-page reproduction of maps is very helpful.

Chapter 1 provides a context for why this research is important. In recent years, many scholars have suggested that the earliest colonization of the Americas must have occurred via the West Coast due to paleoenvironmental constraints in the interior. Without early coastal sites, however, this remains an untestable hypothesis. GIS models can assist in narrowing the search parameters for these potential sites. Chapter 2 is an extensive literature review discussing the evolution of landscape theory and the development of archaeological predictive models. It also provides a summary of GIS as related to this project and a brief discussion of past submerged landscape investigations on the continental shelves. The number of topics necessitate brevity in discussion of each, but comprehensive references in the chapter prove valuable to the interested researcher. Chapter 3 narrows the focus to southeastern Alaska, providing discussion of the modern geology, geography, flora, and fauna. The chapter also provides paleoenvironmental reconstructions for sea level, glaciation, and geomorphology. The brief synthesis is helpful, but given how important the latter topics are to the model in ensuing chapters—and because this volume serves as a guide to researchers interested in this process—a more extensive discussion of the paleoenvironmental data would have been of great interest, especially a detailed discussion of how specific sea levels and coastal geomorphology were extracted from the noise of cataclysmic glacial outwash. Chapter 4 is a discussion of Northwest Coast culture history and ethnography, which provides a useful orientation to those unfamiliar with the study area.

The next three chapters provide the meat of the volume, presenting the GIS model (Chapter 5), statistical testing of it (Chapter 6), and field testing (Chapter 7). The GIS model was created from layers derived from topography (constructed from DEM and bathymetry data seamed together) and paleoenvironmental data: hydrology, geology, glaciology, and sea level, which were relatively weighted based on known archaeological site factors to produce probability maps for each 500-year period between 16,000 and 11,000 cal BP. These were combined into a master-weighted overlay of high and moderately high potential. It would have been very interesting to see each of the individual maps, but the combined final model is what was utilized for survey and is more applicable to basic data gathering in the field. Chapter 6 presents statistical validation of the model via Kvamme's Gain, Getis-Ord General-G, and Global Moran's I (Getis and Ord, Geographical Analysis 24(3):189–206; Kvamme, in Predicting the Past: Theory, Method, and Application of Archaeological Predictive Models, 1988) using new site location data, which independently indicate that the model is somewhat predictive and that it is more predictive than other iterations have been. Chapter 7 presents the field testing, in which remote sensing methods (side scan, multibeam, and a small amount of sub-bottom profiling) discovered some areas of interest, but no unambiguous sites were discovered during the extremely limited grab sampling. There were also numerous technical difficulties during fieldwork, which is to be expected in offshore work, especially with the limited budgets available to most archaeological projects.

Chapter 8 discusses the 18 known archaeological sites in the region for the model span (prior to 10,000 cal BP) in context of the model. Three sites did not have accurate location information available, one was found in an area that would have been modeled as high probability, and the other 14 were located in areas of moderately high potential. Chapter 9 discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this process, and Chapter 10 provides a one-page summary and conclusion. There are several references in the final chapters to completed projects and forthcoming publications that present more refined models and field methods. These publications are eagerly awaited.

Monteleone's book provides a detailed discussion of how submerged landscape models are created. It demonstrates that site discovery is not the only marker of model success, given the very limited amount of excavation that can be attempted in offshore areas due to time and money constraints. This volume will be useful to those looking for guidance about how to utilize GIS for submerged landscape studies, and further efforts at submerged landscape modeling will potentially add to our knowledge of early peopling of the Americas and the coastal migration scenario for this important development in world prehistory.