Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Traditions is a book whose time has come. The generations of archaeological fieldwork, so well documented by the various authors in Part I, has created the background and a solid foundation from which the inconvenience of state boundaries can be overcome. The Caddo area spans parts of the US states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma. The editors are experts in the Caddo archaeology of Arkansas (Duncan P. McKinnon), Louisiana (Jeffrey S. Girard), and Texas (Timothy K. Perttula). They are to be commended for presenting their research in a nonpolemical way. This not to say that there have been no disagreements in the roughly 100 years of Caddo archaeology, and this is acknowledged by some of the authors. But the disagreements can be managed by debate, dialogue, agreements on disagreements in some cases, and moving on. This book is well illustrated through drawings and black-and-white photographs. The hardcover book has a nicely sewn binding, with a color image—matte finish—on the cover, a brown background, and no dust jacket.

The book is divided into three sections: “The Framework of Studies of Ancestral Caddo Ceramics and Regional Traditions,” “Ceramic Variation and Social Interaction,” and “Contemporary Caddo Ceramic Traditions.” The first chapter of Section I is “Approaches to the Study of Ancestral Caddo Ceramics,” by Perttula, Girard, McKinnon, and David G. Robinson. Here, various ways of studying Caddo pottery are considered, starting with the most common—by looking at ceramic typology—which is based on whole vessels and moving to the descriptive system, which focuses on the rim and body ceramic sherds. The descriptive system based on sherds is mostly focused only on Arkansas, and there is no published account that describes the system. Other systems are iconographic analysis, vessel forms and functions, technological attributes, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), and petrography. Of all of these other systems, INAA has not yet achieved its potential in East Texas due, in part, to the lack of studies. The remaining six chapters in Section I focus on various geographical regions in the Caddo area. Girard, David B. Kelley, and McKinnon look at the Red River Basin in northwestern Louisiana and southwestern Arkansas in Chapter 2. Amanda L. Regnier, Perttula, and Livingood focus on the Red River Basin in northwestern Louisiana and northeastern Texas in Chapter 3. Chapter 4, by Ann M. Early and Mary Beth D. Trubitt, looks at the Ouachita River Basin in Arkansas. In Chapter 5, Scott W. Hammerstedt and Shelia Bobolik Savage examine Caddo ceramics in the Arkansas River Basin in eastern Oklahoma. Perttula covers all of East Texas in Chapter 6. Finally, Paul N. Eubanks focuses on Caddo salt pans and comparisons with those from other areas of eastern North America.

Section II includes cases of studying Caddo ceramics as clues about patterns of social interaction. Shawn P. Lambert discusses INAA of fineware Caddo vessels dating from AD 850 to 1200 in Chapter 8, and he finds that these vessels were not mostly made at Spiro, in Oklahoma, but instead, hundreds of miles to the south. In Chapter 9, “Ceramic Variation as an Indicator of Interregional Interaction and Community,” McKinnon compiles data from a study area transcending and traversing state boundaries; his Caddo ceramic database currently encompasses 13,034 whole and mostly whole vessels. Chapter 10, “Spatial Variation in Ripley Engraved Bowls among the Titus Phase Caddo of Northeastern Texas and Communities of Identity,” by Ross C. Fields, considers pottery alongside other artifacts from the Pine Tree Mound site (41HS15) in northeastern Texas. Eloise Francis Gadus writes about iconography and symbolism of Caddo pottery in Chapter 11, “Origin and Development of the Caddo Scroll Motif.” Robert Z. Selden applies network analysis toward studying historic Caddo ceramics in Texas in Chapter 12 and then uses 3D visualization to study the Caddo bottle shape in Louisiana in Chapter 13.

Section III is much shorter than I and II, but it may be the most significant because it includes Caddo insights into what Caddo pottery means to them. Jeri Redcorn, the author of Chapter 14, was the first Caddo potter to resurrect traditional Caddo pottery in recent decades. She learned from archaeologist James E. Corbin in 1992, but she has added much to her particular style. She speaks of Chase Kahwinhut Earles, the author of Chapter 15, as an “artist, a shooting star, with immense potential” (p. 289). Earles also sees making Caddo pottery as a way to connect with his ancestors. Both Redcorn and Earles write about much more, but I will focus here on Redcorn's struggles with the “typology” system of Caddo pottery. In the past, she has advocated changing pottery names to Caddo names so that they would have more meaning to Caddo people and potters themselves. She was told that pottery type names were pretty much carved in stone (or in clay, as it were). Perhaps she has gained some influence. As an example, an old pottery type was recently given a new name—“Spiro Engraved” was changed to “Iwi (Caddo for “eagle”) Engraved” (Shawn Lambert, Jeri Redcorn, Chase Earles, and Timothy Perttula, “Decolonizing in Practice: Renaming of an Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Vessel Type,” Caddo Archaeology Journal 32:5–10, 2022).

Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Traditions therefore thoughtfully brings Caddo pottery and pottery studies of the past into the present.