The Great Plains of North America offer an opportune case study to analyse warfare, as the area presents a remarkably different archaeological record compared to more socio-politically complex regions such as the American Southwest or Mesoamerica. The Great Plains were home to hunter-gatherer populations for more than 13000 years, from the earliest colonisation through to the violent conflicts between the U.S. military and equestrian foraging populations of the AD 1860s and 1870s. The region also hosted many farming populations, with horticultural societies settling into the well-watered valleys of the Eastern Plains beginning within the last 2000 years. With limited documentary sources at their disposal, archaeologists interested in past conflict can turn to the material record and explore evidence such as the visual arts, defensive structures and skeletal remains. This volume explores how scholars seek to identify evidence for conflict in the archaeological record, when and where warfare occurred within the Great Plains, the possible causes and consequences of such conflict, and the question of whether an absence of evidence for warfare necessarily implies peaceful conditions. The volume documents that both the foraging and the farming populations of the Great Plains were drawn into conflict at various times, with the best evidence for such events dating to the last millennium.

The editors divide the volume into four sections. In his Introduction, forming Part 1 of the book, Douglas Bamforth presents a thorough overview. The chapter is a well-written summary of warfare, addressing why warfare (or lack thereof) is central to the human experience, how archaeologists identify warfare in the archaeological record, and general patterns of pre- and post-contact warfare documented within the Plains. The paper frames the remainder of the volume, and in its detail goes beyond the scope of the typical Introduction and simple listing of the following chapters.

Part 2 is titled ‘Emic views: warfare in Plains rock art’ and contains three chapters by well-known rock art experts. Rock art provides excellent evidence for warfare and raiding. Chapters by Greer and Greer, Keyser, and Sundstrom provide abundant examples of common imagery from the Northern Plains. Much of the visual imagery depicts battle scenes, raids and warrior gear, including shields, a variety of weapons and types of body decoration. While the majority of the description focuses on rock art, authors also discuss other media, such as hide paintings depicting winter counts, that is, graphics containing a visual inventory of the year's most significant events as experienced or recalled by the craftsperson. The majority of the rock art discussed in these chapters relates to the hunter-gatherer populations of the Western Plains, due in part to the greater exposure of rock surfaces within the uplifted terrain of the Western compared with the Eastern Plains. The frequent depiction of warfare in these panels clearly documents violence within hunter-gatherer populations, which otherwise can be difficult to identify given the comparatively limited material records.

Part 3 is titled ‘Fortification as evidence for violence’. The geographic coverage spans the Southern Plains, Wyoming, the Northern Plains along the Missouri River, and the eastern USA. Chapters by Dye, LeBeau III, Vehick, Drass et al. and Schroeder describe the various ways defensive structures were built and used. This includes wooden palisades, ditches and other earthworks, and simple rock-walled structures related both to farming villages and hunter-gatherer groups. The authors provide abundant examples of fortifications from the Great Plains and surrounding regions, but also ponder how properly to identify them archaeologically and differentiate potentially similar-looking features such as irrigation ditches from defensive ditches. Ultimately, the inhabitants of such sites had to decide whether erecting fortifications was worth the investment in construction and maintenance, or whether moving on to another location was a more pragmatic choice for self-preservation.

Part 4 is titled ‘Warfare in society and Plains history’. Chapters by Hollinger, Mitchell, Clark, Kendell, Bleed and Scott, and Bamforth and Clark provide case studies of warfare, mostly from the pre-contact farming villages of the Missouri River. This section of the book is the most thematically diverse, as the authors explore strategies of warfare during late nineteenth-century battles and catalysts for warfare in the region, including ethnic conflict, disputes over competition for resources and the control of trade.

The volume presents a rich compilation of warfare research and is of great value to scholars researching violence, farming populations, rock art and grassland archaeology. This reviewer enjoyed the diversity of topics, and the contextualisation of case studies through the lens of warfare studies. I have two minor comments regarding the overall work. The volume is rather uneven in terms of the distribution of illustrations. The three rock art chapters contain over 45 illustrations of rock art panels, glyphs and maps, greatly adding to the text in terms of visual data. The five chapters on fortifications vary considerably, however, with several chapters well illustrated while others contain only one or two images. Another notable issue is the volume's lack of osteological scholarship on warfare, here represented by only Kendell's chapter on scalping at the Crow Creek Massacre (early AD 1300s to mid 1400s). The editors rightfully acknowledge the effect of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) on skeletal research within the USA. While this law mandated skeletal inventory, it is difficult to understand, nearly 30 years after its enactment, to what degree this work has been completed and is awaiting dissemination. It is to be hoped that this present volume will inspire the publication of additional osteological scholarship related to violence and warfare on the Great Plains as revealed via NAGPRA research and compliance.