This book is a multigenerational tribute. Although it was initially conceived by the late Donna C. Roper to recognize the accomplishments and lasting contributions of Waldo R. Wedel to Central Plains archaeology, circumstances prevented its completion before Roper's untimely passing in 2015. The coeditors decided to complete Roper's efforts to honor Wedel and in the process produced a book that is also a fitting tribute to Roper's outstanding scholarship. Most importantly, Matthew E. Hill Jr. and Lauren W. Ritterbush's People in a Sea of Grass provides more than a celebration of Wedel's and Roper's influences on Central Plains archaeology, building on the foundation laid by these two scholars by using archaeological research (including data from cultural resources management studies) to explore twenty-first-century methods and interpretations. In 12 chapters, the 10 contributors to this volume examine diverse themes significant to readers in and outside the Central Plains, including human–environmental interactions, chronology, exchange, migrations, ideas about community, and relationships. For those unfamiliar with the geographic setting, the coeditors are quick to point out that the stereotype of the Central Plains as a huge expanse of unchanging grasslands is flawed; in fact, it is an extremely dynamic environment. This makes the Indigenous lifeway adaptations of the region through time of special interest, and it also demands updated archaeological perspectives and methods, which this book provides.
Hill (Chapter 2) explores in broad brush the changing perspectives in Central Plains archaeology, setting the stage for the book's dominant theme, and the professionalization of Central Plains archaeology, which notably came into its own beginning in the 1930s with the work of Wedel and colleagues. He convincingly argues that Central Plains archaeologists never fully endorsed processual archaeology and found postprocessual critiques less than wholly satisfactory as well. What has emerged is an archaeology that considers gender, power, ideology, and increasingly the perspectives of Native peoples as important.
Brad Logan (Chapter 3) provides a detailed case study of Kansas City Hopewell, associated with sites near the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers and an important comparative variant of the Middle Woodland Hopewell cultural adaptation found in much of the eastern United States. The author provides ample fodder for rebalancing the perception of Kansas City Hopewell, envisioning it as a significant development in the larger Hopewell world.
Ritterbush (Chapter 4) provides a fresh perspective on the Late Prehistoric era and what is widely known as the Central Plains tradition, which has been a topic of intensive research for generations of Plains archaeologists, with Wedel and Roper as influential thinkers in their respective days. She argues that more chronometric analyses are needed to help connect to protohistoric groups that occupied the region.
William T. Billeck (Chapter 5) provides a case study of ceramic variability within the Steed-Kisker phase of Missouri, clarifying that it is native to the Plains and has only minimal indirect Mississippian influences. Susan C. Vehik (Chapter 6) looks at political and ideological developments within the Little River focus of central Kansas, dating from about AD 1400 to the late 1600s. She updates Wedel's interpretations, arguing that the council circles present at sites in the area were constructed in response to increasing conflict and population coalescence and reflected the control of ideological messaging.
Mary J. Adair and Jack L. Hofman (Chapter 7) trace the growth of Pawnee archaeology in Nebraska; they “embrace the involvement of the Pawnee Nation and individuals who provide an oral history account of their origins” (p. 98). In Chapter 8, Ritterbush considers the archaeology of ancestral Kanza (Kaw) Indians, who played an important role in the early history of the central Great Plains and in the development and critique of the direct historical approach.
Sarah Trabert, Matthew Hill, and Margaret E. Beck (Chapter 9) provide interesting new insights on community building based on their ongoing work at the Scott County Pueblo in Kansas. Beck (Chapter 10) expands on their insights in her chapter considering broader implications of Puebloan–Central Plains interactions during late precontact times and the development of the Southern Plains macroeconomy.
Donald J. Blakeslee (Chapter 11) discusses the Quivira expeditions (AD 1541–1602), providing fascinating details from recently translated historic accounts and the archaeological record to describe the Quivira as a thriving set of communities in central and southern Kansas. He emphasizes that these settlements were towns, not villages, and operated at a far larger and more complex scale than commonly attributed to Plains cultures.
At the outset, Hill and Ritterbush state that the collective goal for the volume “is to create new frameworks for exploring social organization, political leadership and ideology, cultural contact, and ethnicity” (p. 1), which is notably ambitious for a relatively short book (171 pages of text). However, it is well edited and succinct with contributed chapters of uniformly high quality and an engaging writing style. Although of obvious interest to those involved directly with Central Plains archaeology, this book also has value to a broad audience of archaeologists seeking comparative case studies and insights into the archaeology of specific descendant Indigenous groups such as the Pawnee and Kanza. Beck's chapter looking at Puebloan–Plains interactions usefully expands the geographic scope of the volume, and Hill and Ritterbush's thoughtful concluding remarks will likely be cited often by future authors exploring Central Plains archaeology topics.
