This edited volume is not a post-processual or phenomenological exploration of Iroquoians and their landscape. Instead, it is a collection of “processual-plus” studies on micro- to macroscale settlement patterns from both sides of the Ontario/New York border. That border, the editors argue, has limited archaeological understanding of the precolumbian landscape. Some of this division is explained by real differences in laws, relationships, and research trajectories. However, those contemporary realities have little to do with the AD 800 to 1600 time period being examined.

The introduction, “Settlement, Space, and Northern Iroquoian Societies” by Jones and Creese, provides a primer on Northern Iroquoian culture as related to landscape and space: swidden agriculture, hunting, gathering, and fishing, the division of labor for related tasks, the size and structure of longhouses and villages, the appearance and disappearance of palisades, and regular “low-level warfare.” The usual foundational texts are cited and supported with some more recent references. The challenge the editors put forth is how to augment such archaeological findings with cultural understandings from the ethnohistoric/ethnographic record and descendants. That challenge is not evenly incorporated into the chapters that follow.

The first two case studies examine household-level social organization with spatial patterning at a Cayuga longhouse and the clustering of longhouses at 20 Ontario village sites. In “Dwelling, Daily Life, and Power at Parker Farm,” Rodriguez and Allen use lithic artifact distribution in and around a single longhouse compartment to speak about gendered work spaces and flexible power arrangements. No supporting ethnographic data or oral history for longhouse cultures are provided, but previous work by Creese and Pueblo-based studies are cited. In “Explaining Long-Term Trends in Iroquoian Village Scale, Density, and Layout,” Creese calculates the angular dispersion of longhouses to argue that village patterns promoted a sequential heterarchy by limiting the number of independent households. Such an explanation of longhouse growth is not unlike those done for Pueblo expansions, yet here explicit comparison between those cultures are not made.

The next three case studies are framed as exploring cultural and natural ecologies of settlements. In “Iroquoian Settlements in Central New York State in the Sixteenth Century,” Allen and Katz call attention to the diversity of site types but then focus on just two sites, Parker Farm and Carman. This chapter also characterizes community-level activities through artifact densities within and around a single longhouse. Parker Farm becomes associated with women's activities through pottery densities, while Carman's prevalence of lithics and unburned bone is thought to reflect a gender balance, possibly from long-term occupation. The issues of sampling bias are discussed. In “Multi-Scalar Perspectives on Iroquoian Ceramics,” Birch and colleagues use “big data” to seek out robust patterning. This chapter is dense with data, and the reader can easily miss some of the more subtle interpretations within. The change in presence of nonlocal pottery over time is flagged as important, but no new explanations are provided. In “Refining Our Understanding of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Haudenosaunee Settlement Location Choices,” Jones uses GIS to assess landscape decisions inherent in village sites. Many variables are considered, and differences in preferences between nations are described. Jones decides that intergroup relations were of primary importance in shaping the Haudenosaunee landscape and that more “emic data” is needed.

The last two case studies explore the interrelationships of “space, ethnicity, and identity” but also lack emic data. In “Cross-Border Interaction in Iroquoian Bioarchaeological Investigations,” Forrest examines the growth patterns of 68 children from 22 sites and finds no difference between New York and Ontario communities or between pre- and postcontact time periods. Stability in childcare practices is credited with this lack of change. In “Revisiting Onondaga Iroquois Prehistory through Social Network Analysis,” Hart and Engelbrecht use stylistic elements on pottery from 114 sites to test almost 50-year-old explanations of the Onondaga world. They find that villages were neither inwardly focused nor static but “changed on a frequent basis to reflect the needs of the people” (p. 210).

The final chapter, “The Study of Northern Iroquoia” by Williamson and Snow, incorporates other research into the volume's discussion but neither summarizes current knowledge nor provides future directions. Iroquoian archaeology is awash in data but in need of new syntheses to move us beyond testing foundational ideas. Here, the editors call for fewer boundaries that had little or no meaning to past peoples and more focus on what “Iroquoia” meant and means to people, nations, and confederacies. This volume's processual-plus approach and wealth of raw data is a welcome step in those directions.