Extracting Stone: The Archaeology of Quarry Landscapes, by Anne S. Dowd and Mary Beth D. Trubitt, explores Indigenous quarry landscapes in North America. The book aims to appeal to both specialist and nonspecialist readers, including students, and is written at an easily accessible level.

Dowd and Trubitt begin by providing background on the importance of studying stone quarries from an archaeological perspective (chapter 1); they chronicle the history of the archaeology of quarries in North America, focusing particularly on the work of William Henry Holmes during the late 1800s and early 1900s (chapter 2); and they give an overview of landscape archaeology in quarry studies (chapter 3). These introductory chapters are followed by three case studies.

The first, “Flint Mine Hill, New York” (chapter 4), focuses on trends in landscape use throughout the Middle and Late Archaic period, from roughly 3050 through 1450 BC. Dowd and Trubitt argue that optimal foraging models best fit current data about quarry usage through time, although they raise the intriguing possibility that variation in use of Flint Mine Hill resources resulted from its cosmological significance. The second (chapter 5) explores the Middle to Late Archaic use of Arkansas novaculite, including from Spanish Diggings, spanning the period from roughly 4500 through 1000 BC; the chapter contains a detailed description of the novaculite quarrying process, including the extent and size of quarry pits and debitage piles. The third case study considers the use of “Obsidian Cliff, Wyoming” (chapter 6) during the Woodland, Late Prehistoric, and contact periods, providing a detailed account of its early archaeological exploration and the variability between the primary and secondary sources of obsidian. Chapter 7 concludes the volume by highlighting the role of quarry studies in understanding the scope of people’s past landscape interactions, speaking to other contemporary literature on both landscape and quarry studies. In drawing comparisons among the examples, the authors illustrate that year-round access and proximity to water resources influenced how people used quarries. An appendix lists quarry sites in the continental United States that are open to the public and gives some guidance about how to visit them.

The volume proposes that landscape approaches to quarries are necessary for discussions of the interactions between humans and their environment. As the authors point out, the extraction, production, and use of tools occur at different points on the landscape but are not disconnected from each another. This section of the volume is in conversation with the concept of QuarryScapes (Forfattere Abu-Jaber et al. [editors], QuarryScapes: Ancient Stone Quarry Scapes in the Eastern Mediterranean, 2009), which highlights the importance of landscape-scale approaches to quarry studies.

Although the volume focuses on landscapes in North America, the authors draw on global comparative examples. The discussion of Rapa Nui and landscapes of megalithic construction when addressing the ritual importance of most toolstone extraction locations was a particularly useful example. Likewise, Dowd and Trubitt reference ritual objects produced from Colha chert—from Belize—to discuss the potential of belief systems to influence the distribution of Flint Mine Hill toolstone. Ethnographic studies of Indigenous quarrying often discuss the physical and metaphysical dangers of quarrying, (e.g., Nash, We Eat the Mines and the Mine Eats Us: Dependency and Exploitation in Bolivian Tin Mines, 1979), which results from the symbolic importance of stone (e.g., Houston, The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence, 2014). Dowd and Trubitt make connections between the potential symbolic importance of each raw material as a factor in the distribution of tools and production waste.

The authors draw from their own work on quarries and lithic studies to elucidate each of their three major case studies. They describe the quarry landscape in each case, tying the examples back to the broader landscape orientation of the volume. They describe raw materials from relevant sources—including visual characteristics and toolstone form—and extraction techniques based on archaeological findings. The history of exploration of each source is discussed, including an overview of Holmes’s early investigations of the Obsidian Cliff source. The authors end each case study with a discussion of areas for future work, which are particularly useful for orienting those new to quarry studies toward potential avenues for research.

One important theme that stems from the landscape approach of the volume is the utility of quarry studies in understanding past lifeways, including mobility, production, and exchange. Furthermore, although drawing from older literature—including from the late 1800s and early 1900s—the authors also highlight the role of modern technology (including lidar, GIS, and sourcing techniques and technologies) in quarry studies, providing a good overview of how such research was performed in the past and how it could be done in the future.

In general, the production quality of the volume is high. The book contains a number of images—some in full color, some black and white—that are helpful in understanding the quarry landscapes and stone resources the authors discuss. Dowd and Trubitt provide boxes with additional information that is helpful in contextualizing discussions throughout the book, such as those summarizing archaeological chronology in North America and techniques for geochemical characterization of raw materials. Similar boxes also provide information on some of the individuals discussed, including William Henry Holmes and Barbara Luedtke. The volume will appeal to members of the public and will be useful to undergraduate students and beginning graduate students looking for an overview of quarry studies in North America. I can see this text being used in a lithic technology class. Its length (157 pages including bibliography) makes it accessible for students.