Book Review

The Southern Colonial Backcountry is a book of essays resulting from a 1993 conference by the same name held at the University of South Carolina and sponsored by that institution and the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. As stated in the introduction, the conference organizers recognized the increase of work on the southern backcountry in the early 1990s by historians, geographers, and archaeologists and aimed to present the findings of those different disciplines in a single venue. In fact, this conference was one of at least three held in the past fifteen years (1985 conference on the Appalachian frontier at James Madison University and Mary Baldwin College; 1992 conference, "Cultural Diversity on the Virginia Frontier," held at Emory University and Henry College; 1995 conference at the Museum of American Frontier Culture in Staunton, Virginia) to highlight the same surge in backcountry studies.

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As a volume of essays, this book does not necessarily advance a thesis, but it does present (and struggle with) the questions what is the southern backcountry, and why is it important? The editors wisely begin with a general overview of the region to provide some context and then move on to specific case studies. Consequently, the editors' "Introduction: Southern Frontier Communities Viewed through theArchaeological Eye," Robert D. Mitchell's "The Southern Backcountry: A Geographical House Divided," and Michael J. Puglisi's "Muddied Waters: A Discussion of Current Inter-Disciplinary Backcountry Studies," along with Warren R. Hofstra's "Epilogue: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on the Southern Colonial Backcountry, 1893-1998," represent the strongest discussions concerning the nature and definition of the backcountry.

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