The Caddos and Their Ancestors is an excellent introduction to the archaeology of northwest Louisiana. As the title suggests, the book focuses largely on the Caddo Indians, who inhabited the region for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of the first European explorers. This book would make a fine addition to a home or office library. It is well written and well illustrated and can be appreciated by professional archaeologists, students, and anyone who is interested in the history and archaeology of northwest Louisiana. Although Girard uses very few specialized terms, for readers who are unfamiliar with undergraduate-level archaeological jargon, there is a five-page glossary at the end of the book that defines most, if not all, of these terms.

The book is organized into seven chapters. The first is a brief introduction to archaeology intended to help the nonspecialist contextualize the information presented in the subsequent chapters. In Chapter 2, Girard discusses the first peoples of northwest Louisiana from the Paleoindian period to the end of the Late Archaic (ca. 11,500–500 BC). The next chapter is devoted to the Woodland period (ca. 500 BC–AD 900). Unlike the people at Watson Brake and Poverty Point in northeast Louisiana, the pre-Woodland people in the northwestern part of the state were not known for building mounds. By the Middle Woodland period, however, there were several small ceremonial mound centers in northwest Louisiana such as the Bellevue mound and the Coral Snake mound. During the Late Woodland period, larger multiple-mound centers such as the Fredericks site in Natchitoches Parish were used for communal feasting and burial rituals. Shortly thereafter, gradual changes in settlement patterns, burial practices, and artistic styles began to occur. These traits and practices can be traced into the historic period and are associated with the Caddo Indians—a group of related peoples who lived in the adjoining parts of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

Chapters 4 and 5 focus on sites built by the Caddo of northwest Louisiana. The largest of these is the Mounds Plantation site located in Caddo Parish. In the late 1950s, the upper two-thirds of two of the site's mounds were leveled by the landowner, and their contents were used as fill in a cultivated field. Fortunately, when the landowner encountered human remains, he notified Ralph McKinney, a local rancher with an interest in archaeology. With the aid of Clarence Webb, a skilled amateur archaeologist, McKinney excavated the mounds prior to their near-complete destruction. Sometime around the thirteenth century, Mounds Plantation was abandoned, and the Caddo began to live in dispersed communities. An example of this can be seen at the Willow Chute Bayou locality in Bossier Parish. Dozens of sites in this locality were identified and collected by Louis Baker, another amateur archaeologist who made valuable contributions to Louisiana archaeology. Although this dispersed settlement pattern persisted until European contact, the Caddo continued to build mounds during the late prehistoric and protohistoric periods. The most well known of these is the Belcher site in Caddo Parish. This site's mounds are composed of a chronological series of burned and buried structures, which were excavated by Clarence Webb and numerous volunteer laborers off and on between 1936 and 1954. The final two chapters of the book deal with the effects of European colonization and American expansion. Following a rapid influx of American settlers in the decades following the Louisiana Purchase, the Caddo of Louisiana sold their lands to the US government in 1835. After a brief stay in Texas, most Caddos moved to Oklahoma, where many of their descendants live today.

This book is a testament to the value of Louisiana's regional archaeology program, in which the author served as the northwest regional archaeologist until his retirement in 2015. Due to state budget cuts, however, this program was recently disbanded—an unfortunate occurrence since much of what we know about Louisiana's past is a result of the efforts of the state's former regional archaeologists. The impacts of amateurs and interested locals are also apparent when reading about the sites mentioned in the book. It is often these individuals who identify and help preserve archaeological sites, and in many instances, they have collected valuable data from sites that are in the process of being destroyed. Finally, it is clear that archaeologists in the Caddo area work well with the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and that these two groups routinely benefit from each other's knowledge and expertise.