This attractively produced book presents chapters based on papers given at the 2012 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco. With a strong focus on landscape archaeology, the contributors use a range of approaches to consider various aspects of llama and alpaca herding in Peru and Bolivia.

The editors define pastoralism as a “general form of economic subsistence that is fundamentally (but not exclusively) based on the management, production, and consumption of herding animals” (p. 1). As an initial proposition, this definition provides a framing device for the book as a whole, but the editors also entitle the subsection in which it appears “Pastoralism and Herding Societies” because not all the contributors define what they mean by pastoralism. At times it appears that if there is evidence that herding or “rearing” (p. 119) took place in a society, there are grounds for including the chapter in the book. The elastic term “agropastoralism” is brought into play to justify the presence of such contributions, despite the efforts of Manuel Perales Munguía, who explicitly grapples with the concept of agropastoralism and the shift in emphasis from an economy predicated on herding to one in which people put more effort into growing crops (p. 159). Axel Nielsen defines pastoralism as a social network of interacting agents consisting of the household of human herders, the herd animals themselves, divinities he calls generically “deities,” and the community constituted by these three categories of agents (p. 232). This satisfying alternative definition provides a good example of how to use social principles to consider both humans and herd animals as actors—for example, Nielsen discusses how herders attempt to dissuade their llamas from dispersing or leaving the homestead (p. 239).

The final chapter consists of a commentary by David Browman. His observations are at times very rigorous. Browman offers good reasons for not always agreeing with the contributors. He points out interconnections between the chapters and indicates some areas of emerging importance in research into pastoralism. Browman discusses his reservations concerning the speculative reliance on using evidence taken from pastoralists in other parts of the world (p. 246). The editors apply the secondary products revolution approach (pp. xi, 2) to the Andean case; in support of Browman's comments, it has to be stated very firmly that this theory, which was devised for the archaeology of Eurasia, is not applicable to the Americas. It has already been established that Archaic populations in the Andes were spinning and making fabrics from the fleece of vicuña and guanaco well before the domestication of llamas and alpacas (Dransart, Earth, Water, Fleece and Fabric, 2002). Unlike wild sheep, wild camelids already had fleece, which gatherer-hunters spun.

The imposition of a notion concerning secondary products leads Katherine Moore to undermine herself in an otherwise good chapter on the biology of camelids and deer as related to seasonal activities such as hunting. She acknowledges that camelid fleece was used prior to domestication, but she contradictorily asserts the editorial line that fleece “would have been the essential secondary product” (p. 30). This assertion constitutes a categorical mistake. Another indication of just how dangerous it is to attempt to apply the notion of secondary products to camelids: Browman points out that in her conference paper Claudine Vallières listed milk as one of the products taken from camelids (p. 250). It is fortunate that this error has been corrected in the published version, because no evidence suggests that people milked camelids in the past, and they do not do so in the present.

Although Moore's perspective is from the central Peruvian highlands, it is commendable that she considers evidence from other parts of the Andes and does not confine herself entirely to the geographical remit followed by other authors. Maria Bruno and Christine Hastorf's chapter, based on research in progress into what can be learned from a study of camelid dung, is welcome, too, in exploring the diet of camelids. They could, however, have related their findings to fleece production, because their analysis of samples of dung burned at Tiwanaku suggests that the camelids had access to plants from wet zones. Alpaca herders state that in order to have plentiful supplies of fleece, it is important for alpacas to graze on moist pasture. The lack of a chapter on fleece is a significant omission from the book because yarns and textiles provide direct evidence for the primary use of fleece, which has clearly been valued by people from the earliest human occupations of the Andes up to the present.

The theme of water management occurs in several chapters and some contributors (Kevin Lane and Jennifer Grant, as well as Perales) refer to the practice of using irrigation canals to extend areas of vegetation cover for moist pasture. This topic is important for the landscape focus of the book, but these chapters make only cursory reference to the published literature. There is scope here for integrating into the discussion ethnographic accounts of the differing approaches agropastoralists and pastoralists use to manage canals in order to explore the implications for understanding distinctions in the past.

Highlights of the book include Nicholas Tripcevich's study of a long-distance journey from Cotahuasi to Apurimac with a caravan of llamas bearing a cargo of salt. Members of the project made a careful record during the journey, charting the roles of each llama within the caravan—at the front as main leaders, as occasional leaders, in the middle of the pack, or bringing up the rear. Not only the human participants are named as individuals; the llama participants are, too. Tripcevich pays close attention to the wedge-shaped configuration of the herd when walking along a trail and applies his observations to the width of prehispanic roads; wide roads would make it easier for large caravans to travel quickly (p. 224). In a poignant note in her chapter, Susan deFrance mentions that colonial-period pathologies on camelid phalanges and vertebrae from Torata Alta indicate how stressed llamas working in the wineries were, suffering from illnesses and becoming lame (p. 131). Such contributions add to a growing body of literature reporting on the important topic of human relationships with herd animals in the context of landscape.