Latin American archaeology has a long history of entanglements with colonialism, oppression, European exceptionalism, and Indigenous disenfranchisement. In recent years, however, an increasing number of archaeologists have been striving to move the discipline beyond these problematic roots, thus opening up a new methodological niche. The leaders of this specialty, which is called by several names—community archaeology, action archaeology, ethical archaeology, or collaborative archaeology—share lessons learned from the successes and failures of sincere collaborations with the communities affected by archaeological investigations and presence. Common publication themes include how to cultivate and support nonacademic shareholders, how to ensure that our research benefits them, and, perhaps most difficult, how to improve the odds that these relationships and benefits are sustainable in the long term. As Peter G. Gould, the author of Empowering Community through Archaeology and Heritage, notes, “Archaeologists have littered the globe with failed site museums, handicrafts projects, and tourism ventures at every scale, leaving local populations disaffected by promises undelivered and local entrepreneurs carry[ing] investments in heritage tourism that yield no returns” (p. 4).

Gould set out to provide a framework to avoid such failures, crafting a fascinating addition to the growing corpus of community archaeology how-to works rooted in his unique career trajectory. A latecomer to the field, Gould started his career in behavioral economics, first at the Brookings Institution and continuing as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Carter presidency before working with a variety of venture and private capital firms.

The book draws largely from published work in behavioral economics and four case studies, each a successful community-driven development project that has survived at least 20 years: (1) a Maya women's cooperative at the entrance to a nature preserve in southern Belize; (2) a potter's cooperative based near an Inka temple between Cusco and Lake Titicaca, Peru; (3) a community organization that runs a visitor's center and a few tourist-oriented businesses in western Ireland; and (4) a for-profit public/private partnership that runs multiple archaeological sites, nature preserves, and museums in Tuscany, Italy. Although only three of these projects are directly associated with an archaeological project or park, each one comfortably fits within the “Archaeology and Heritage” scope indicated by the book's title.

The book is a quick, easy read for archaeologists, development specialists, economists, and community leaders, with minimal jargon to muddy the waters. It is organized into seven chapters that can be lumped into two broad sections. Chapters 1–3 outline the basic theoretical framework, vocabulary, and concepts Gould uses to assess his case studies in Chapters 4–7. A short introduction and conclusion bookend the discussion and try to draw out the main problems and lessons learned in the rest of the text.

The primary issues that Gould focuses on involve organization and governance. Who are the shareholders? How is the resulting organization structured, and how does it distribute power, responsibilities, and benefits? The case studies have vastly different degrees of operational and political complexity and scale, but he is able to find enough commonalities to propose a series of traits to keep in mind when designing or improving similar endeavors.

There is a lot to recommend in this book. It presents concrete lessons for and solutions to potential pitfalls and is refreshingly candid about internal and external crises that threatened to derail each of these projects in the past. Gould is emphatic and clear in his arguments against common misapplications of economic terminology, especially “the commons” and “public goods,” neither of which are germane while discussing archaeology and heritage. Instead, he promotes using the concept “common pool resources,” which are owned, managed, and used by specific groups, for all but the biggest archaeological sites that are already incorporated into national and international economies.

By reframing archaeology and heritage as common pool resources, he promotes a viable alternative to the top-down approach that results when archaeological sites are declared national parks, world heritage sites, and the like. Instead, Gould argues that local shareholders should be the primary managers of their heritage—setting directives, making rules, managing finances, and resolving conflicts that arise. Outsider shareholders, including archaeologists, should be dedicated more to supporting the local actors through providing finance, training, and specialized knowledge. Such a bottom-up approach is more promising for long-term survival, is better able to address local interests, is nimbler for adapting to a changing political and economic landscape, and is generally more beneficial to the local shareholders.

The book's negatives are, in my opinion, mostly limited to feasibility, scale, and ambition. While Gould does pick case studies that are on a small scale from the perspective of international development agencies, they are still much larger and more complex, and require much more investment, than most archaeologists’ ambitions and abilities would allow. As a result, he aims for the overlooked middle ground between what most development organizations are designed to deliver and what most scrappy academic projects are able to achieve. Success at this scale requires the flexibility and focus on local leadership that archaeologists can more easily provide, as well as the generous and consistent funding that we cannot.

Because the book is directed toward that nether realm between the development and academic worlds, I have a hard time picturing any substantial audience that is a perfect fit for it, at least at this point in time. It is, however, is a good resource for people on both sides of that divide as they think through and model sustainability. The book would be quite useful for applied anthropologists attached to academic projects and for project directors, community leaders, and other individuals embarking on long-term collaborations.

Having engaged in such endeavors over the past two decades, I do count myself among the target audience and will consider this required reading for my team from here on out. It is a useful complement to Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2012), which tackles issues of collaboration between scholars and local populations from an Indigenous perspective. Because of Empowering Communities through Archaeology and Heritage's short length, easy digestibility, and useful information and models, I recommend it for anyone engaged in or thinking about engaging in collaborative research, regardless of the scale of and level of involvement in the development outcomes.