Based on a seminar held at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2017, this edited volume presents a refreshing approach to the archaeological study of empires. Although individual chapters discuss a wide variety of case studies in different areas of the world, the common thread is clear: empires are diverse in the strategies they implement, in how they impact local populations, and in how they are altered through local encounters. Empires are dynamic polities that are constantly created and re-created through quotidian activities and interaction at the local level. Using multiple lines of archaeological evidence, the contributors move away from outdated models that solely focused on core elites and institutions.

The introduction (Bleda S. Düring, Anna L. Boozer, and Bradley J. Parker) presents the bottom-up, agent-centered approach that the volume contributors use. The chapters that follow discuss different archaeological case studies that expose the great diversity and complexity of empires. Chapters 2–6 emphasize the multidirectional relationships between agents of empire and local populations, demonstrating how local populations that encounter imperial agents can affect, build, and change an empire. In Chapter 2, Stuart Tyson Smith discusses New Kingdom Egypt in Nubia through a framework of cultural entanglement. He demonstrates how both the Nubian and Egyptian cultures were transformed through the process of incorporation, focusing on transculturation, synthesis, and negotiation. In Chapter 3, Alice Yao discusses the border of the Han Empire in China as a place that was actively created and built through the daily activities and interactions of settlers. Living in colonies, and not in forts, these nonimperial agents contributed to the production of the border by developing a sense of belonging through the development of social networks and the building of cemeteries. In Chapters 4 and 5, Sonia Alconini and Boozer each compare two different areas and demonstrate how local elites were involved in imperial projects. Alconini reveals how the Indigenous elites of the southeastern (Yampara) and eastern central (Kallawaya) frontiers of the Inka Empire were crucial to imperial success. Despite the former having been relatively autonomous and the latter more dependent on the state, Indigenous elites of both regions benefited from disseminating the Inka project, which was key to sustained Inka control. Boozer compares two borderland areas within Roman Egypt and shows how these two areas, despite being in a similar environment, shaped the empire in fundamentally different ways by forcing imperial agents to adapt to distinct local conditions. In Chapter 6, Düring presents the heterogeneous nature of the Middle Assyrian Empire. He demonstrates that different people—elites and nonelites, Assyrians and locals—produced and reproduced the empire locally. He explains the resulting diversity in terms of the means (resources) available to the state, the benefits for the different agents involved, and the incentives for participating in the empire.

The next two chapters take a different approach and focus on the long-term trajectories of imperial development. In Chapter 7, Lisa Overholtzer challenges the timeline of Aztec imperial formation. Using excavation data, she demonstrates that many changes associated with Aztec incorporation predate the Late Postclassic. Overholtzer concludes that Aztec agents likely revised their history by purposefully leaving out the earlier phases of imperial development. In the last case study, Patrick Ryan Williams, Donna Nash, and Sofia Chacaltana (Chapter 8) discuss how the Wari and Tiwanaku states contrastingly expressed political, military, ideological, and economic power outside of their respective heartlands. They argue that the later Inka Empire borrowed many of its strategies from these earlier polities.

The last two chapters of the book focus on theoretical approaches to the study of empires. In Chapter 9, Parker advocates the study of different pathways of power—political, ideological, social, and economic—that are expressed at varying degrees through space and time. Similar to a network model, Parker argues that empires expand along corridors, establishing nodes (“network hubs”) of territorial control from which they further expand or impose different degrees of hegemonic control. Expansion is followed by consolidation, but the network shape persists and certain areas remain outside the empire. Finally, in Chapter 10, Boozer and Düring conclude the book by reiterating the value of an agent-centered, bottom-up approach to empires that focuses on diversity through space and time.

Overall, this volume represents a welcome addition to the study of empires—one that puts agents and diversity at center stage. Departing from traditional models and simplistic typologies, Archaeologies of Empire encourages readers to envision empires as produced and reproduced by individuals who have different, and sometimes contradictory, stakes in the imperial project. One potential area for further investigation is that of the “negative spaces” of empire—that is, those areas that remained mostly outside the realm of imperial control (p. 237)—to understand the full range of imperial and local strategies, decisions, and interests.