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  • Abundance: The Archaeology of Plenitude ed. by Monica L. Smith
  • Brian Fagan
Abundance: The Archaeology of Plenitude. Edited by Monica L. Smith (Boulder, University Press of Colorado) 261 pp. $68.00

According to the introduction, abundance in this edited volume refers to the large numbers of particular objects found in archaeological sites, signifying their importance, whether for food, ornamentation, or utilitarian use. Abundance became a sign of ritual cohesion; it was not only a social marker but also a distinguishing feature of social stratification. The highest ranks in society displayed their power through largesse and iconography.

The ten chapters in this volume cover a broad spectrum of topics about a wide variety of forager and farming societies, as well as historical empires. The data discussed in them show the ways in which abundance can be documented in the archaeological record. Maria Nieves Zedeño examines new research that attempts to measure various kinds of wealth in relation to bison abundance along the Rocky Mountain foothills. Her chapter is particularly informative about the issue of ritual bundles. Christopher Moore and Christopher Schmidt examine ways in which Archaic societies in the lower Ohio Valley interacted with one another in landscapes where scarcity was rare. Mark Varien and his fellow researchers use archaeological and ethnographic data astutely to re-evaluate assumptions about scarcity in the Southwest. They show that communal feasting and bountiful intangibles, such as the elaboration of motifs on artifacts like food bowls, amplified ceremonialism and community social organization. Katheryn Twiss and Amy Bognard look at bumper crops and abundance in the context of the Neolithic community at Çatalhöyük, where strategies included concealment and dispersal.

Payson Sheets examines the Maya village of Cerén in El Salvador, where people overproduced to exchange commodities with others and transcend a limited self-sufficiency. Traci Ardren, another Mayanist, examines Chunchucmil in the northwestern Yucatán, a large settlement adjacent to savannah but possessed of poor soils. She discusses the inconspicuous but little-known savannah trade in such essential commodities as palm thatch. Elizabeth Klarich and her colleagues immerse us in the unexpected nuances of the obsidian trade at Pukara and Tracao near Lake Titicaca in the Andes. They focus on the wasteful consumption of obsidian as a measure of status.

The three final chapters wander far from the Americas. Justin Walsh uses big data sets to examine the distribution of everyday wares around numerous Celtic and Iberian sites in the ancient Greek Mediterranean world between Iberia and Switzerland. François Richard looks at a mosaic of consumption patterns among small mobile populations in northern Senegal during the past millennium. Stacy Pierson's chapter about the growth of the Chinese porcelain trade in Tang dynasty, China, after A.D. 1300 reveals that porcelain vessels numbering in the millions became a visual dimension of plenitude across a huge swathe of the Asian world. All of the authors depict abundance as a carefully managed component [End Page 539] of individual and collective interactions. Plentitude was highly coveted throughout human history or, to put it another way, "too much is not enough."

The eight articles in this volume could easily have appeared in specialized journals, to be read profitably by specialists. Some of the chapters are interesting and original, but as a collection, they leave huge gaps. The book has no coverage of prehistoric Europe, with its ever-more-complex Bronze Age societies, or of such fascinating ancient societies as those of the Khmer and Indus states. The complex role of wealth in traditional Pacific Island societies and in Japan is also missing.

Herein lies the central problem with the platoons of edited volumes that now flood the marketplace. Almost invariably resulting from a conference, they offer a potpourri of articles with an often poorly defined central theme. Admirable as some of these articles are, interdisciplinary scholars would be better served if Monica L. Smith were to write a global book about ancient abundance herself. The current volume can best be described, optimistically, as a prelude to greater things.

Brian Fagan
University of California, Santa Barbara
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