The simple-versus-complex hunter-gatherer dichotomy has long sought to categorize human societies along a unilinear evolutionary scale, with “simple” egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands at one end and “complex” hierarchical states with centralized leadership at the other. In this framework, complexity was often equated with social hierarchy, surplus agricultural production, and sedentism, whereas simple hunter-gatherer societies were associated with small-scale, mobile, and economically undifferentiated egalitarian foragers. Christina Perry Sampson and other contributors to Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America rightfully discard that dichotomy. Instead, they focus on the ways in which people and societies responded to a range of internal and external stimuli through unique social and political structures that did not necessarily require agriculture but still developed complexity: these people relied on a diversity of fisher-hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies, as well as varied political, economic, and social structures, to suit their needs as a society.

Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America focuses on case studies from coastal and riverine settings in North America. Sampson writes that this allows authors to address both “the ways that history, ecology, and the landscape all shaped the trajectories of complex fisher-hunter-gatherers in coastal and riverine environments” (p. 5) and how complexity tends to be correlated with North American landscapes. Yet this focus does not mean that the book is overly environmentally deterministic. Instead, authors use these environments as context for examining diverse social, political, and economic structures that led to or arose from complexity.

On the Florida Gulf Coast, for example, Thomas J. Pluckhahn and coauthors argue that complexity arose as people moved from communal resource sharing to a more intensive use of the environment in ways that enabled control by smaller corporate groups, thus centralizing power and resource access. In a case study in the same region, Sampson looks at the development of complexity through specialization, in which some communities began manufacturing shell ornaments for trade through networks reaching far into the interior of North America, exploiting the needs of a growing Mississippian ceremonial sphere.

In the reexamination of a classic case study of fisher-hunter-gatherer complexity among the Channel Island Chumash in California, authors Mikael Fauvelle and Jennifer E. Perry similarly focus on shell ornament production; however, they look at the role of ritual practice and public ceremony in obligating Channel Island communities to participate in the exchange of ceremonial belongings between the islands and the mainland. In this example, regional networks and economic specialization played a major role in driving political and social complexity. Relatedly, in a chapter by Scott D. Sunell and Christopher S. Jazwa, it is possible to see the impacts of developing complexity on neighboring communities—in their case, the smaller communities of the northern Channel Islands—and how the development of complex fisher-hunter-gatherer societies in the southern Channel Islands altered the trade relationships and territorial boundaries of Chumash people on the fringes.

Other case studies in the volume also reexamine well-studied regions where fisher-hunter-gatherer complexity occurs, such as the Northwest Coast (chapters by Colin Grier and by Anna Marie Prentiss et al.) and Alaska (Caroline Funk et al.), in which multiple lines of evidence—archaeological, historical, ethnographic, environmental, and the like—provide more nuanced interpretations of the development of complexity and what that complexity might look like in varied contexts and at different points in time.

In the final chapter, Tristram R. Kidder explores the history of thought on complex hunter-gatherers from archaeological and anthropological perspectives. Importantly, this chapter stresses that hunter-gatherer societies should not be viewed as mere steps on linear evolutionary trajectories but instead reminds readers of the great deal of diversity in past and present societies. Furthermore, although archaeologists may look for specific hallmarks of complexity, humans “occupy multiple social spaces and roles simultaneously” (p. 229), and the social and economic variation both within and between societies may be viewed as complex from one perspective or point in time but simple from another. Importantly, Kidder reminds readers that we must “account for local histories, consider cooperation as a socially malleable process, and recognize that landscapes and landscape changes mediate social relations through time” (p. 230), meaning that social, political, and economic change may be driven by internal or external processes.

It is interesting to note that the focus on the development of complexity of fisher-hunter-gatherer societies continues throughout this volume, but there is little discussion of why these societies may decline. In some instances, it is obvious that external forces like sudden and destructive environmental shifts or the arrival of settler colonialism caused their decline, but in others, subtle shifts in internal structures, regional networks, or political leadership may be the driving forces. The decline of fisher-hunter-gatherer societies may be just as revealing in our understanding of complexity as their ascension can be.

In the introduction, Sampson asks, “Is it in fact possible to clarify the political, economic, and social dimensions of complexity in a way that brings cohesion to these diverse approaches?” (p. 7): answering this question remains a challenge. The problem is not that this book does not attempt to address that issue—it does: the problem is us, as humans. People do a lot of different kinds of things to solve problems and address societal, political, and economic challenges. A solution that works in one region, with one population, might not work in another. It is not possible to generalize human behavior. Furthermore, human groups often exhibit remarkable dynamism. Fisher-hunter-gatherer societies are highly adaptive, capable of changing their social organization, subsistence strategies, and even levels of hierarchy in response to environmental and social pressures, as demonstrated by several case studies in this book. This fluidity challenges the notion that the paths to (or maybe even from) complexity can be easily categorized and the expectation that societies need to fit into fixed categories of complexity or egalitarianism at all. Sampson and authors consider these myriad issues, making this book a valuable contribution to reexamining fisher-hunter-gatherer complexity.