In brief, resilience theory arose in ecology as a counter to cybernetic systems theory. Ecological systems neither remain constant nor seek to maintain equilibrium. Central to resilience theory is the notion that systems persist through variability and adaptation. The system is generally depicted as the infinity symbol to represent a continuous adaptive cycle entailing four phases: growth or exploitation (r), conservation (K), release (Ω), or sudden change, and reorganization (α). In the introductory chapter, editors Daniel Temple and Christopher Stojanowski are at pains to orient our perceptions of hunter-gatherers away from a model of cultural evolution that necessarily leads from foraging to agriculture. Instead, they view hunter-gatherers as purposeful social actors. They wish to examine the persistence via resilience of hunter-gatherer groups, as well as the adaptations that allow cultural or ecological continuity, the instances of transformation (adaptations resulting in a new system), and in some cases, the collapse of the system. The particular emphasis of the volume, as the subtitle indicates, is the application of bioarchaeological methods to hunter-gatherer studies within the framework of resilience theory.

Although the authors employ a range of approaches that address health, trauma, diet, biomechanics, identity, and ideology (mortuary practices are considered within the domain of bioarchaeology), they also provide a wide survey of archaeological and ethnohistorical cases. Susan Pfeiffer and Lesley Harrington (writing about hunter-gatherers) and Michelle Cameron and Jay Stock (on hunter-gatherers and herders) examine cases from the Late Stone Age in southern Africa. Valeria Bernal, Ivan Perez, Maria Postillone, and Diego Rindel compare the responses of populations in southern and northwestern Patagonia to the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Rick Schulting considers the resilience of European hunter-gatherers in the face of the 8.2 kya event—an abrupt cooling trend that spanned some 100–400 years or so—and the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Daniel Temple investigates the effects of climate changes on populations during the Jomon period in Japan (16,500–2400 BP). Pedro Da-Gloria and Lucas Bueno investigate interior Brazil, where populations persisted from 10,500 to 7000 BP, but after that, the archaeological record becomes sparse, and mobility and territoriality change across the broader region. Erin Borneman and Lynn Gamble analyze the response to European contact among the Chumash of southern California. Eric Bartelink, Viviana Bellifemine, Irina Nechayev, Valerie Andrushko, Alan Leventhal, and Robert Jurmain focus on the San Francisco Bay Area, where levels of violence appear to correlate with sociopolitical changes rather than climate fluctuations. Christopher Stojanowski's case study is situated in Niger, and he analyzes dental evidence to address the question of whether the Middle Holocene inhabitants were hunter-gatherers or pastoralists. Bryn Letham and Gary Coupland track changes in mortuary practices in the Northwest Coast of North America between 3500 and 700 BP. Two studies look farther north: Lauryn Justice and Daniel Temple to Alaska, where persistence of mortuary practices is evident over a period of dramatic socioecological changes from 1600 to 400 BP; and Charles Merbs to Hudson Bay, where the Sadlermiut rapidly became extinct in the face of European-introduced disease during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries AD. Similarly, Littleton addresses demographic collapse following European occupation of the Western Riverina region of southeastern Australia.

Jane Buikstra's concluding chapter bookends the volume with an overview of anthropology's changing view of hunter-gatherers, a brief history of the bioarchaeology of hunter-gatherers in North America, and a discussion of modeling change in archaeology (full disclosure: Buikstra was my dissertation advisor, and we have since collaborated). She also offers a critical discussion of the contributions to the volume, noting that there is certainly a role for bioarchaeology in the study of hunter-gatherer resilience and adaptation demonstrated by the chapters but also pointing to areas of needed improvement if the full potential is to be attained.

I largely agree with Buikstra's assessment of the various chapters, but I would add a note on the volume as a whole. Taken individually, the chapters provide fascinating descriptions of hunter-gatherers in a variety of circumstances. The relationship between the case studies and resilience theory, however, seems somewhat forced, and the resilience theory does not always add much to the arguments being made. There is an inconsistency in the identification and measurement of resilience, as Buikstra notes, that undermines the authors’ attempts to make the case for a bioarchaeological component to resilience studies. The bioarchaeological analyses could easily stand alone. Nevertheless, this volume serves as an important first step in initiating a bioarchaeological contribution to resilience studies and also as an indication of the challenges facing this endeavor.