BOOK REVIEWS 99

A group of nine papers on soil erosion and soil movement, emphasize the importance of these processes in southeastern Africa. The papers are mostly concerned with morphology, and with relationships between erosion, soils, hydrology, and land use. By their nature, such studies are largely site-specific and reinforce the conclusion that soil erosion is a multifacetted system of relationships.

Two papers on weathering use modelling approaches to spheroidal and freeze-thaw phenomena but the work shows that many of the old problems still await solutions. The papers on Late Pleistocene and Holocene environ- ments show that there have been many fluctuations of climate in the Cape Mountains and Karoo, but the evidence seems to be drawn from a limited range of sites and that concerned with the possibility of periglacial and glacial processes in mountains is still subject to alter- native interpretations. The volume concludes with a group of papers with a variety of topics.

The overall impression left by a reading of this volume, is that workers in southern Africa are making major contributions to keeping alive work on planation history, are advancing work on aeolian processes and Quaternary environments, and are active in a range of local studies particularly on modern processes which are related to land use. Some valuable generalizations are now possible but the lack of continuous sedimentary records in terres- trial environments is inhibiting progress in development of comprehensive models of landform development.

The Geomorphology of Southern Africa is a systematic treatment of its subject with a suite of chapters on many of the topics expected in a general geomorphology text, but with some which are of more significance in southern Africa than in most continents, - thus ‘Lakes and Pans’ and ‘Granite Landscapes’ are given separate treatment.

An introductory chapter discusses the macroscale geo- logical development and the formation of major erosion

surfaces. Of the remaining 13 chapters, nine are essen- tially process-based but all attempt to relate process to landform examples. The book concludes with a brief chapter which both demonstrates the paucity of evidence available over much of the subcontinent for climatic history and classifies the existing evidence and its implica- tions. One disappointment is the lack of a more compre- hensive treatment of duricrusts.

In preparing such a book the editors have a major responsibility for deciding upon the level of treatment they wish contributors to achieve. A decision was evi- dently made to pitch the book at a level accessible to senior undergraduates and to provide a text which con- centrates on major research advances of recent years by putting them into a wide context. Bibliographies for each chapter and references in the text are therefore compre- hensive and the approach is that of discussion rather than description. The uniformity of level which has been achieved adds greatly to the value of the book and gives it a coherence which is usually difficult to achieve with 15 authors.

Both of these books are well presented and edited. For most people outside southern Africa, I suspect that The Geomorphology of Southern Africa will be a more useful book and a useful review volume of modern geomorphol- ogy of the area. Together the books demonstrate a high level of activity from a small number of people within a huge landmass, with an enormous wealth of landforms and geomorphic processes and deposits which are only just beginning to yield the evidence needed for a compre- hensive understanding. The books are a valuable contri- bution to geomorphological knowledge.

M. J. SELBY University of Waikato

CATASTROPHIC FLOODING edited by L. Mayer and D. Nash, Allen and Unwin, London, 1987. ISBN

This book is the result of a conference held in Sep- tember 1987 at the University of Miami. It is not possible to determine whether all the papers at the conference have been included. If they have all been included then the conference was of a very high standard indeed. The eighteen papers are organized round a number of ques- tions which concern cause and effects, measurement, sedimentary dynamics, and modelling and statistics as tools for the prediction of these extreme flood events. Unfortunately this structure is not made clear to the reader at any point.

I found the book both interesting and readable. It seems to represent excellent value as a library resource. The papers were a tight group of relevant contributions from a body of active practitioners. The standard of presentation was excellent and having just reviewed

0 4 5 5 1 142-X.

another conference based book at the same price this seems far better. Frankly I could hardly fault it bar a missing ‘k‘ on York on the list of contributors!

Ample data was provided in many of the chapters and this will prove useful as the basis of practical interpret- ations in class. This will be an important text for senior classes working in the fields of natural hazard, extreme events, or flood hydrology. I cannot see this becoming a class text for it is more of a research tool but it would be very reasonable to expect that students be guided to read parts of this book and so I would expect that most libraries would wish to order a number of copies.

Like any text this book has some faults, the most important of which is the lack of any index. This might not have mattered if the contents had subdivided each paper but it did not and the simple title is not enough to guide the reader. Imagine you wish to read up on the planetary geomorphology of Mars, prior to a vacation possibly! This is covered in both the first and fourteenth

100 BOOK REVIEWS

papers but is not indicated in the titles alone, although in fairness to Rossbacher and Rhodes their title ‘Planetary Analogs for Geomorphic Features Produced by Cata- strophic Flooding’ does give a strong clue to the contents. It is interesting to note that, in both cases, the inclusion of section headings in the contents would have indicated unambiguously that Mars featured. While in no way wishing to denigrate the book I would have enjoyed a section of synthesis in which the Editors picked out the unique contribution of geomorphology to the under- standing and amelioration of very large floods. To me the term ‘catastrophic’ means having properties of a catas- trophe and this implies an effect on people. Can the work

reported in this book identify catastrophe prone areas? Will they be repeated? Can ‘warning’ systems be developed?

I know that I will use parts of this book in my own reading lists. It has been put together with a lot ofthought for the end user. The diagrams are excellent and of a consistent style and standard. The range of cases exam- ined is large and the references are extensive enough to make a good starting point for student seminar research. The editors are to be congratulated on a fine addition to the literature.

ADRIAN MCDONALD University of Leeds

MEDITERRANEAN COASTS OF ISRAEL AND SINAI by D. Neev, N. Bakler, and K. 0. Emery, Taylor and Francis, New York, Philadelphia, London, 1987. No. of pages: 130.

The book deals with a 400m stretch of shoreline in Israel and Sinai. Although only a small proportion of the total world shoreline, less than one per thousand, the Israeli coast, as pointed out by the authors, ‘has perhaps the most concentrated reasonably well-studied sites of the past several hundred years’. The book presents a sum- mary of 30 years of work on the coastal zone of Israel by the authors with the purpose, as they defined it, ‘to compile and present relevant data that we have observed and studied since 1958 and to deduce from them the geological history of the coastal zone of Israel’.

The book is related to many fields and is directed to a wide audience of students and scientists in geology, archaeology, prehistory, geomorphology, and palaeo- environmental sciences. The book is in two main parts: one is the stratigraphy and the other the tectonic history of the coastal zone in the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. It also includes a summary, a short geological introduction plus a final synopsis chapter pulling to- gether the authors conclusions and a bibliography with about 200 annotated references.

The stratigraphical chapter extends from the Late Pleistocene to Holocene times, with emphasis on Holo- cene time limits. The archaeological time stratigraphic units presented in the text are not consistent with the conventional archaeological time division. Middle Pal- aeolithic is considered to extend from about 100OOO yr to

40000 yr and not from 50000 to 30000 yr as pointed out in the book (p. 7).

The tectonic chapter describes and analyses evidence for tectonic activity from about 20 archaeological sites situated along different segments of the coast. Oscillatory movements, up and down, are inferred from marine or lagoonal deposits. Several parallel fault lines along the coastal zone were active during a number of historical periods, and caused the subsidence of harbours, as in the site of Caeserea, o r in the rise of ancient tells such as Akko, determining the movement westwards of settle- ments in the area.

In the final chapter, Synopsis, the authors discuss their ideas about the tectonic history of the coastal area. A high rate of uplift for the Holocene is indicated-10 m ka-l- for the central segment of the coast, based on archaeo- logical evidence and an oscillatory theory of movement is put forward. Both of the main conclusions presented in this book are controversial. However some of the op- posing ideas are also described and are well represented. These contradictory views remain unresolved in the book and indeed it would seem that further evidence is needed to support the views of the authors.

O n balance, the book is a useful guide as a basis for coastal studies anywhere in the world, and is also a good reference text about the coast of Israel and Sinai. Al- though the arguments presented are not reconciled the book can nevertheless be recommended at the scientific and educational level as a worthwhile contribution to the neotectonic issue.

MOSHE INBAR University of Haifa