Abundance makes a compelling argument for considering resource abundance, rather than assuming resource scarcity, as a driving force in human dynamics—a shift that could fundamentally change the interpretation of archaeological data. The volume highlights archaeological examples from different levels of social complexity (mobile hunter-gatherers, early agriculturalists, state-level societies, and historical empires) and from around the world, including the Americas, Anatolia, the Mediterranean, Senegal, and China. This broad perspective effectively demonstrates how abundance can be identified and interpreted using multiple lines of evidence that are regionally, culturally, or chronologically specific.

The qualitative and quantitative evidence for abundance varies depending on the types of data available and archaeological context. Evidence for abundance in the Archaic Lower Ohio River valley (numerous lightly used artifacts; Moore and Schmidt) or in the Puebloan Southwest (increases in the amount and diversity of potsherds through time; Varien, Potter, and Naranjo), for example, is inherently different than in the Mediterranean (importation of Greek pottery/wine vessels by non-Greeks; Walsh) or imperial China (mass production of porcelain; Pierson). Some datasets allow for the quantification of specific objects or food remains comparable through time or across households to measure abundance at varying levels. In some cases, abundance is quantified through measuring “wastefulness” or intentionally discarding objects or materials that retain a long use-life. Such patterns are apparent in assemblages of minimally used and casually discarded (yet exotic) obsidian in the Titicaca Basin (Klarich, Levine, and Schultze) and intentionally discarded porcelain intended for the imperial Chinese court where pieces were only used once. Abundance can also be qualitatively measured, including objects not well preserved archaeologically. For example, plant fibers used by the Maya for thatching were important, and the local abundance of thatching material is seen as having been critical to the success of Yucatán settlements such as Chunchucmil (Ardren). The diversity of objects/materials/foods is another measure of abundance, for the Archaic Lower Ohio River Valley (Moore and Schmidt), Plains bison hunters (Zedeño), the Puebloan Southwest (Varien et al.), the Maya (Sheets; Ardren), and precolonial Senegal (Richard).

As various authors note, the perception of abundance, and how it relates to scarcity, is situational and relative, framed by -etic and -emic perspectives. In a region where real food scarcity exists intermittently, integrating the archaeological and ethnographic perspectives of agricultural Pueblo people of the Southwest is elucidating. Here, the perception of abundance is framed by an intimate understanding of scarcity, as one cannot exist without the other. The performance of abundance through communal ritual and feasting (an extension of the domestic meal) reinforced social values accentuating community, sharing, and extended social relationships that ensured abundance.

While ecological plenitude and scarcity of resources exist, humans also create abundance and scarcity. Abundance can be created through landscape management of wild resources, cultivation/ agriculture/husbandry of desired foods and raw materials, the creation of ritual wealth, and exchange networks. Using fire to promote the growth of plant foods and manipulate the movement of bison, for instance (Zedeño), was an act of enhancing an already natural abundance. Scarcity can also be socially constructed, with access to resources restricted to certain sects of a population.

As Smith and other authors note, people are and were drawn to resource abundance. Yet abundance is not necessarily an “unmitigated positive” (Twiss and Bogaard). Resource abundance is complicated by the social and logistical organization required for procuring, processing, and storing a “surplus” of food, especially in delayed-return societies. Negotiating food concealment and dispersal, public/private food stores, intrahousehold sharing, and defense were challenges created by abundance at Çatalhöyük, Cerén, and elsewhere (Smith; Sheets; Twiss and Bogaard). In effect, abundance and scarcity may exist simultaneously. At the Classic Maya site of Cerén in El Salvador (Sheets) excavations unearthed at least 10 metric tons of manioc tubers that were harvested just prior to site abandonment due to volcanic eruption. The labor required to process this vast food source within days of harvest to prevent spoilage must have been immense, a resource potentially scarcer than the manioc itself.

Abundance effectively demonstrates the importance of considering etic and emic perceptions of abundance when interpreting archaeological data. This approach rings true in my own research on California's Channel Islands and the adjacent mainland, where the Chumash and their ancestors encountered ecological abundance for >13,000 years, yet resource scarcity and stress driven by population growth and environmental change have long been seen as the primary driving forces in the development of their sociopolitical complexity, cultural change, and regional exchange patterns (see Gill, Fauvelle, and Erlandson, An Archaeology of Abundance: Re-Evaluating the Marginality of California's Islands, in press).