F. De Romanis and A. Tchernia (eds), Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India . New Delhi: Manohar/Centre de Sciences Humaines and Italian Embassy Cultural Centre, 1997. Pp. 284, illus. ISBN 81-7304-194-6. Rs. 425.

J. McGlade, 'Archaeology and the evolution of cultural landscapes: towards an interdisciplinary research agenda', in P. J. Ucko and R. Layton (eds), The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape (1999), 458-82, is doing this kind of work on a relatively small scale. The next step could be a project with the broad sweep of G. and R.'s work. The Romanization of what is now Europe was the largest change before our own time, in term of effects on local nature and culture. A truly interdisciplinary investigation could look at Mediterranean landscapes before, during, and after Romanization to assess those changes, in a kind of retrospective Environmental Impact Assessment. Such a project has obvious intrinsic interest, and would also help with some of the present and future problems of managing Mediterranean landscapes, in Europe and elsewhere.