Fort San Juan and the Limits of Empire is dedicated in part to the late Charlie Hudson, who instilled in his students the value of clean writing, good storytelling, and “the evidence.” This volume is a fitting homage. The work draws heavily from Hudson's research, telling the archaeological and ethnohistorical story of Fort San Juan (1567–1568), one of Juan Pardo's ill-fated forts at the Native American community of Joara. After a decade of archaeological investigations, the editors of this volume identify the Berry Site (NC) as the site of Joara, and Fort San Juan.

The volume is organized into 10 chapters exploring several research themes, the most compelling of which focuses on the gendered relationships between Spaniards and Joarans and how these interactions contributed to the fort's downfall. Documents (John E. Worth), architecture (Robin Beck, David Moore, Christopher Rodning, Sarah Sherwood, and Elizabeth T. Horton), wood (Lee Ann Newsom), macrobotanicals (Gayle J. Fritz), zooarchaeology (Heather A. Lapham), and material culture (Rodning, Beck, Moore, and James Legg) are brought to bear on this central question, indicating an eventual pivot in relations between Joarans and Spaniards. Newsom's research on wood and Horton's analysis of cane indicate that while an early fort structure was built by a team of Joarans and Spaniards, a later structure was hastily built without the benefit of skilled Joaran craftsmen. Cooperation was on the wane. Lapham's research suggests that, at first, Joaran hunters gave the fort prime cuts of bear meat usually reserved for honored guests in equal proportion to venison. Over time, gifts of bear meat from Joaran men declined and venison was increasingly delivered as prepared cuts, rather than butchered on site, suggesting a growing distance between Spanish and Joaran men. These shifts, plus documentary and artifact evidence indicating that Pardo's men arrived with few provisions or trade goods, suggest that the Joaran view of the invaders dimmed as the Spaniards overstayed their welcome.

Gendered interactions played a prominent role in the deterioration of Spanish-Joaran interactions. It was Teresa Martín, a Joaran woman married to a Spanish soldier, who testified that Spanish “improprieties” with local women led to the attack on the fort in 1568. Joaran women spent many hours at the fort preparing meals, but a decrease in butchery waste suggests that their time spent at the fort declined. The editors explain this shift through an enforcement of colonial policy restricting such interactions, but it seems more plausible that stresses, including tribute demands, a lack of reciprocity, and probable sexual violence, led Joaran women to pull back from interactions with the fort.

The role of women is further illuminated in Fritz's research, which indicates that hickory nuts replaced acorns in Spanish meals. The editors hypothesize that this reflects a concession to Spanish preferences, but it seems more likely that, as discussed elsewhere, this shift is related to the arrival of captive women from the northwest where hickory was more commonly consumed. Hickory shells were found alongside a large quantity of nonlocal ceramics. That Joaran and nonlocal women may have labored alongside each other raises the possibility, not addressed in the book, that women played a significant role in the eventual destruction of Pardo's forts. While it is not known if the outposts were attacked simultaneously, captive women were surely an important source of knowledge regarding the deadly capabilities and ambitions of the Spanish colonialists.

Although I believe that only one of the contributors (Worth) was a mentee of Hudson's, all of the authors embody his frequent admonishment in seminar, “if you can't write it plainly, it isn't worth writing”—the volume reads effortlessly. Hudson also had a gift for making the past come alive, both in his academic and nonacademic writing. The editors of the volume do more than just nod to the plainspoken lyricism of Charlie's historical fiction, they begin all six sections of the volume with a brief fictional narrative from the perspective of six individuals who crossed paths at Joara in 1567–1568: two Native American women (Luisa Méndez and Teresa Martín), the Joara Mico, a French translator (Guillaume Rouffi), a Spanish officer (Alberto Escudero de Villamar), and Pardo himself.

The editors and authors skillfully weave together many disparate lines of evidence to illuminate the daily life of Spaniards at Fort San Juan, and speculate on the causes of their eventual destruction at the hands of their former hosts. Although the work is theoretically thin, the interpretations of the authors are well supported by meticulously collected evidence. The work is a pleasure to read, and the vignettes of historical fiction effectively place women and men back into what could otherwise seem a sterile past. The volume presents one of the most significant colonial-period archaeological sites in recent memory, work that continues to yield additional insight into the Joaran and Spanish pasts. The work is a must-read for colonial-period archaeologists and ethnohistorians.