Often the work of earlier archaeologists goes maligned by today's professionals, especially as archaeological science advances with the use of technologies and techniques that previous generations of archaeologists could not have dreamed of. However, it cannot be overstated just how important the work performed by Works Progress Administration (WPA) archaeologists and their field crews are to our current archaeological practice and to our wider understanding of the Indigenous cultures that lived throughout the current United States. Amanda L. Regnier, Scott W. Hammerstedt, and Sheila Bobalik Savage offer in this book a history of WPA archaeology in Oklahoma that is entertaining and informative—not just to archaeologists and anthropologists who study Caddo archaeology and culture but also to everyone who may encounter and work with collections that were originally generated by the WPA during the Great Depression (1929–1939). Additionally, within this volume they do the important tasks of both showing how to work with WPA archives and finishing work that needs to be done from within existing archaeological collections. The Ritual Landscape of Late Precontact Eastern Oklahoma offers extremely detailed information for researchers interested in this area and period and is a guide for anyone who may work with archaeological collections and archives collected during the first half of the twentieth century.

After introducing the scope and goals of the book and the cultural and geographic area that is its focus, Regnier, Hammerstedt, and Savage offer an in-depth history of the WPA in Oklahoma, naming the principal players who led the 10 projects it undertook from 1934 to 1940. This chapter includes a very entertaining overview of the trials and tribulations facing the archaeologists working for the WPA, which included cars and trucks that refused to work, troubles hiring crews, landowners who were hot and cold on archaeological investigations, problems filming documentaries, a supervisor absconding with the communal radio, and the ghost of a cat driving a carriage. They also detail some of the more frightening and depressing aspects of WPA-era archaeology, such as the death of a crew member after a looter-hole collapsed while excavating a mound, why landowners were seeking direct financial compensation for permission to work on their land, and the possible racial prejudice of some of the supervisors against landowners. After presenting this history, the authors discuss the methods used by the WPA in Oklahoma, detailing excavation plans, grid placements, field photography, mound bisection, and the specimen numbering system of artifacts collected and washed in the field. They also discuss the laboratory methods used in artifact curation, vessel reconstruction, artifact photography, and even a model of the Spiro site made by the laboratory during the WPA projects.

Nine WPA projects are discussed in the book; the authors direct the reader to James A. Brown's The Spiro Ceremonial Center (Memoirs of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology 29, 1996) for details about WPA excavations at Spiro, an important Caddoan Mississippian mound center in the Arkansas River Valley in eastern Oklahoma. The other excavations—supervised by J. Joe Finkelstein, Carl Ball, Lynn Howard, Phil Newkumet, and Kenneth Orr (on their own or in some combination)—are presented across seven chapters. In these chapters, the authors present edited versions of final reports on the sites based on field records, quarterly reports, letters, and other documentation kept by the field supervisors and other collaborators. After presenting these reports, the authors then compare what was known by the WPA archaeologists to what work has been done on the sites (and the Depression-era collections) since the 1940s, largely driven by archaeologists and graduate students at the University of Oklahoma. The final chapter synthesizes all this information to provide a bird's-eye view of the people living in eastern Oklahoma from roughly AD 950 to 1650; an overview of mound construction, community and political organization, and culture change in the Arkansas River Valley after AD 1450; and a review of the contributions of the WPA to this knowledge.

I recognize the value of this book as twofold. First, it provides a good overview of some important mound sites in the northern Caddo area and the Arkansas River drainage in Oklahoma. This book will be of use to anyone interested in the archaeology of this region for these data alone. Second, the authors present a blueprint for working with historic archaeological archives and legacy collections that I believe can be useful for everyone who works with any such materials from other places and periods of the past.