Since its appearance in American archaeological literature in the early 1990s, “landscape” as a theoretical perspective has sustained widespread adoption. However, like other theoretical frameworks with broad applicability across geographic, temporal, and cultural contexts, interpretations of landscape can mask variation as much as they can illuminate and explain it. To this end, editor Cheryl Claassen has assembled a geographically diverse array of essays addressing how explorations of gender can inform and enhance interpretations of Native American landscapes. Across an introductory chapter and nine chapters grouped into three regions (Cumberland and Ozark Plateaus, the Plains, and the Gulf Coast [Mayan] and western United States), these authors open up the black box of landscape theory by considering how different social groups, past and present people, linguists and their informants, and, yes, members of different gender groups view and perceive and experience landscapes differently.

Claassen's introduction sets the stage for the volume by framing some of the central issues addressed in the following chapters. The overarching theme is that landscapes were (and are) multivocal and can be viewed differently by different individuals and groups. This point is well illustrated in interpretations of Late Archaic and Early Woodland taskscapes of the Upper Cumberland Plateau (Franklin, Langston, and Dennison, Chapter 2) and how a gendered gaze best explains site selection during the late prehistoric period in the Mojave Desert (Roth, Chapter 7). Claassen (Chapter 1) casts a wide net to draw in interpretations of fertility shrines across a gendered ritual landscape in the Eastern Woodlands.

A second key theme emphasized in several chapters is that in much of the ethnographic literature, “gender” is a linguistic construct. While gender may yet be a useful heuristic device, archaeologists should be aware of its non-Native beginnings and its origins within the study of languages. Alice Kehoe's contribution (Chapter 6) is a short but powerful cautionary tale about really understanding the circumstances by which ethnographic sources, including dictionaries and lexicons, came to be. Kehoe argues that Algonkian speakers emphasize context (including age and status but also whether something is animate or inanimate) more than a syntactical and binary linguistic construction of gender. Her use of ethnographic examples and the ideas of living descendant informants is also noteworthy.

These ideas of interrogating ethnographic and other source materials and also reconsidering basic assumptions are echoed in Christie's (Chapter 8) exploration of the Northwest Coast and Hawaiian Islands and Patel's (Chapter 9) reexamination of Maya women's participation in pilgrimages. Both authors explore how Western colonizers often manipulated or filtered what they observed to fit their own religious and patriarchal agendas and worldviews. Greer and Greer (Chapter 5) make interesting use of historic sources from colonial trading posts to tease out who might have been visiting nearby sacred places and when, activities typically not described by the traders and military officials who wrote these documentary accounts.

Any consideration of gender normally entails discussion of what constitutes evidence. As gender is a social construct, archaeologists often rely on analogies to develop their interpretations of the archaeological record. For the most part, the authors in this volume recognize the need to justify their uses of different source materials. Mueller and Fritz (Chapter 4) take some pains to explain why historical and modern Plains Siouan myths about the Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies are appropriate for understanding flint clay statues and effigy vessels of women in the Mississippi River valley that postdate AD 1000. Duncan and Diaz-Granados (Chapter 3) also make considerable use of analogies drawn from Dhegihan (Siouan Osage) cosmology and political economy, but they do not explain why these are suitable points of reference for understanding two petroglyph sites located in the Mississippi River valley between the Ohio and Missouri rivers. Their interpretations are richly compelling, but only if the reader accepts unstated assumptions about the suitability of their analogues.

This volume is remarkable for its cohesion, with nearly all authors making references to the other chapters as appropriate. The index is well constructed, and the chapters are adequately illustrated. A variety of audiences will find this work to be of great value. I would consider using it as a reader for a course on gender because the authors discuss at length the complexities and challenges of interpreting gender as a social construct from archaeological sites and materials while simultaneously providing excellent case studies and examples. Scholars familiar with landscape perspectives would do well to read this book if only to consider the myriad ways this interpretative framework, if left unexamined, can obfuscate the richly diverse past we seek to understand.