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Reviewed by:
  • Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes: War, Climate, and Culture by Richard W. Edwards IV
  • Thomas E. Emerson
Richard W. Edwards IV. Indigenous Life around the Great Lakes: War, Climate, and Culture. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. Pp. 283. Bibliography. Figures. Index. Paper: $35.00.

Indigenous Life is the inaugural volume in the Midwest Archaeological Perspectives series, a partnership between the Midwest Archaeological Conference, Inc., and Notre Dame Press. Edwards weaves together dietary and subsistence evidence within late precontact native lifestyles and risk management models to explore the interrelationships and roles of culture, climate, and maize agriculture in molding native societies in the western Great Lakes. While Indigenous Life employs new technologies and methodologies, its basic focus emerges from a nearly half-century tradition of midwestern interest in humans-environment-climate interrelationships emerging from the environmental archaeology programs initiated in the 1960s by James B. Griffin at the University of Michigan and David A. Baerreis at the University of Wisconsin. However, in a broader sense, Edwards's research addresses the universal question of whether agricultural intensity and socio-political complexity are causally linked, as so many scholars have argued. [End Page 147]

Edwards reconstructs Oneota diet and subsistence practices, anchoring his investigations in the archaeobotanical evidence gathered from a series of Oneota Culture (approximately AD 1000-1500) habitation sites clustered around Lake Koshkonong in southeastern Wisconsin. The use of charred plant remains to reconstruct diet is challenging. What do burnt maize cupules signify (besides a spoiled meal) in regard to the importance of maize in Oneota diet? Consequently, irrespective of the sophisticated methodological and statistical quantification Edwards employs in his analyses (which the general reader may find daunting), charred plant remains are still proxy measures of economic importance. More direct measures of maize consumption come from dietary isotopes in dog skeletons. Scientists have demonstrated that the amount of carbon in bone can be used to determine the proportion of maize in a diet. Since dogs are universal scavengers of human waste, the dietary isotopes in bone of Oneota village dogs should closely resemble those of the contemporaneous villagers. While still a proxy measure, Oneota dogs have demonstrated high levels of maize ingestion that can be directly related to human food consumption patterns.

While political considerations have precluded the molecular-level study of dietary isotopes in human bone in much of the western Great Lakes, there are extensive legacy databases within the region that provide direct insights into late-precontact native patterns of maize consumption. Combining these with a comprehensive and intensive review of regional Oneota patterns of plant and animal exploitation, Edwards is able to conclude that maize agriculture was practiced at a high level, essentially one similar to that of the village agriculturalists at the large mound centers to the south. His case study supports those scholars who have argued that agriculture and political and social complexity are not causally related—in fact, his detailed presentation of the evidence should put to rest such discussions for late precontact native societies in the Midwest.

Much of his theoretical modeling is embedded in "bad year economics" and hints at aspects of economic rationality. What makes his discussions more satisfying than similar past studies that often hover on the edge of economic determinism is his incorporation of social agency within a risk management framework to craft a model that interestingly combines cultural, subsistence, and climatic factors to project a credible reconstruction of regional Oneota subsistence diversity. His reconstruction is enhanced, embellished, and enlivened through appropriate ethnographic and socio-cultural analogies (e.g., the effects on gender, warfare, and so forth). While Edwards's focus looks back to a long tradition of midwestern [End Page 148] environmental studies, his scientific rigor and comprehensive investigations mark the way forward for such research. Edwards's Indigenous Lives sets the bar high for the new Midwest Archaeological Perspectives series, and Notre Dame Press deserves thanks from the archaeological community for keeping the volume at a very affordable $35 price.

Thomas E. Emerson
State Archaeologist/Director (retired)
Illinois State Archaeological Survey
University of Illinois
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