From Reference and Research Book News "Scholars and students from China, the U.S., and Israel present maps and discussion of changing settlement patterns across seven thousand years in an intensively surveyed 765-square-kilometer area. The Chifeng region lies near the traditional frontier between the settled agricultural zone of the Yellow River basin and the varied, sometimes mobile, pastoral, and agricultural adaptations of Eurasia. Beginning in 6000 B.C., it saw the development of sedentary farming, the emergence of Hongshan chiefdoms, the consolidation and dissolution of Lower Xiajiadian petty states, and eventual Han imperial domination. The focus is on field and analytical methods for reconstructing ancient populations and their distributions. The text appears in both English and Chinese."