Chris Speed
On the Road of the Winds
On the Road of the Winds, written by Patrick Vinton Kirch, is an Archaeological History of the
Pacific islands before European Contact. This archaeological survey takes the history and
combines it with biology, ethnography and linguistics to give us a big picture of the area.
Kirch writes for specialists (he merrily switches, for example, between BC/AD and calibrated
and uncalibrated radiocarbon BP dates), but for such a broad range of specialists that the
informed lay reader won’t miss much — and unwanted detail about excavations and artifacts is
easily glanced over. With an effective selection of halftones, figures, and maps complementing
