Anthropological archaeology is constantly evolving, and many of the recent theoretical developments in our field can be credited to expanding our ontological and epistemological frameworks. The recent volume, Archaeology in a Living Landscape: Envisioning Nonhuman Persons in the Indigenous Americas, edited by Brent K. S. Woodfill and Lucia R. Henderson, embodies this shift remarkably well. Its 13 chapters are written by a diverse group of scholars studying the ancient Americas, some of whom are Indigenous but most of whom are settler-scholars engaged in close collaborations with Indigenous peoples. The broad geographic scope of this volume promotes an Indigenous “ontological template” (p. 19) that does not flatten diverse Indigeneities but advocates for a relational and animate Land, of which every element is not only alive but also a person and a relative with whom we must engage reciprocally.

Departing from traditional historiography, Woodfill and Henderson launch the volume with a theoretical introduction that—in addition to citing Latour and Viveiros de Castro—rightfully credits Indigenous thinkers for our field’s recent intellectual developments. Importantly, they elevate the Indigenous critique that the term ontology cannot be used to contrast “Indigenous beliefs” with “archaeological knowledge.” In so doing, the editors lay down a path to move beyond an ontological turn toward an epistemological one.

The three core chapters emanating from North America are among the volume’s best. Steve J. Langdon beautifully draws on rich and powerful Tlingit history to build an ethical relational frame to study their Land in the Pacific Northwest. David Maki and colleagues explore the role of Thunderers as active agents in the formation of greater Dakota Land in the Great Plains. And S. Margaret Spivey-Faulkner explores how Indigenous languages of the US Southeast (such as Muskogean and Siouan) reveal a Natural Democracy attuned to distinct cultures; she asks archaeologists to “move to interpretive models that can adequately account for a relational framework encompassing all entities” (p. 114). Finally, the epilogue, written by Sisseton Dakota elder James Waŋbdí Haŋyetu Rock, emanates from an Indigenous North American tradition but masterfully interpolates human relatives from across time and the continent to critically examine the many epistemologies that can adequately build understandings of Land.

Chapters 5–7 are centered on the Maya world. Chapter 5, written by the editors, fills in an important gap: the relationship between nonhuman personhood and economy. Their approach productively borrows Maya animate ontology to highlight how a Western-scientific ontology cannot alone reveal the complex relational webs that defined Classic Maya economies. For example, they highlight the duties of ancient Maya merchants to pay homage to the gods of Land as they traveled, thus adding a significant cost to their journey. Joel W. Palka and Alice Balsanelli open an informative window onto contemporary Lacandon Maya views of their sacred landscape, where nonhuman persons lead rich social lives. Eleanor Harrison-Buck and Lisa J. Lucero provide a largely self-referential mid-book discussion of the previous few chapters, setting the stage for the volume’s second half.

Chapters 8 through 12 are written by scholars working in the Andes, Amazon, and southern Chile. These five chapters productively establish a decolonized foundation on which to build nuanced and animate ancient worlds. Jacob J. Sauer’s chapter is particularly interesting: it adroitly draws on ethnography, archaeology, and ethnohistory to study immanent meta-persons who inhabit Mapuche Land and cyclically define key relational dimensions of their past and present lives.

One of the several things this volume does well—and which represents a notable challenge for our discipline—is reconciling Indigenous epistemologies with Western, scientific, interdisciplinary research. For example, chapter 3 (Maki et al.) uses remanent magnetization to study lightning strikes and their role in transforming animate landscapes, whereas chapters 8 (Dennis E. Ogburn et al.) and 9 (Nicola Sharratt and Patrick Ryan Williams) use various provenance methodologies to ascertain the relational webs linking Andean animate quarries and huacas. It will be interesting to see how interdisciplinary scholars continue to braid materialist analyses—sometimes deemed extractive by heritage communities—with Indigenous epistemology to produce archaeological knowledge.

This well-conceived and organized volume is timely. It embodies the fact that, as our discipline reckons with its colonial past and increasingly involves Indigenous peoples in the creation of knowledge, it must also reflexively embrace non-Western ontologies and epistemologies. The volume also shows the promise that such an approach has beyond anthropology: