One of the most fascinating ideas in science is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. How can science, which is so highly regarded for its ability to present irrefutable evidence, be based at its core on uncertainty? The answer, of course, lies in the notion that any probe that is inserted into a system in order to perform a measurement will necessarily change that system, however slightly. So it is with analytical chemistry as it turns its observer's eye on the problems of the past: archaeological chemists, in the very act of analyzing and examining the mysteries of our cultural origins and artifacts, have indeed, by becoming part of the system being observed, changed and even created major sectors of our culture. And no author has been more successful than Joseph B. Lambert in documenting and demonstrating with many fascinating examples how this cultural examination and creation has evolved.

Lambert chose to arrange his volume very close to the accepted chronological order in which human beings utilized the materials in the world around them. Thus, the chapters progress from "Stone" and "Soil" to the "Pottery" made from the latter. A chapter on "Glass" is preceded by one on "Color". The later chapters are "Organics", "Metals", and finally, "Humans". In each of these chapters, we find fascinating stories, answers to long-standing archaeological puzzles - or at least the most plausible modern hypotheses, all collected in one unique volume. Lambert skillfully weaves his stories from primary documentation, and often from his own research, into a richly illustrated tapestry that hangs together, yet each section can be read as a stand-alone subject. The final sections of the book consist of a glossary of chemical and archaeological terms, a list of references for each chapter, and a detailed index.

This book would serve nicely as a textbook in a non-science majors chemistry course, as a major reference in more general humanities courses, and as supplemental reading for chemistry majors in either general chemistry or analytical chemistry. Lambert shows that many of the stories behind famous phenomena and artifacts are basically chemical stories, and that the common methodology used on both archaeological and historical objects can provide considerable insight. Chemistry has shown that the unfortunate history of the Liberty Bell, for example, resulted from the addition of an inappropriately high level of tin into the metal mix. We learn that deposits of kaolin, the raw material from which porcelain is made, were discovered in Europe, when an 18th-century entrepreneur was curious about the mineral powder used to dust his wig. And we read that the same technique that produces the glossy finish on stoves and refrigerators was also used to produce King Tut's death mask 3500 years ago.

Traces of the Past reads like a detective story and a sci-fi novel combined. It is a chemical­historical­cultural page-turner that, in the words of Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann, conveys "a double sense of wonderfirst, at the marvelous practical chemistries that people came up with centuries, indeed millennia, before there was the science of chemistry; second, at the sheer ingenuity of chemists today as they probe the cultural artifacts of the past. There is chemistry galore in culture, as Joseph Lambert so readably shows."