This volume, as the title suggests, focuses on the topic of “farming” throughout the “Circum-Caribbean.” These terms—“farming” and “Circum-Caribbean”—are used in their broadest senses. Geographically extensive, the book covers areas from as far north as the Florida Keys and the Maya region to the Guianas and many of the continental (e.g., Margarita, Los Roques) and oceanic islands (i.e., the Antilles). Thematically, it covers a broad range of topics, such as historical ecology, early cultivation, animal husbandry, methods, and social aspects of food production, among many others. The book includes an introduction, 17 chapters, a postscript by Peter Bellwood, and a glossary. The authors are an international group, and they come from different intellectual traditions and training. Bellwood's essay emphasizes comparative perspectives, given that his own areas of expertise are in southeast Asia and Oceania rather than the Caribbean. The introductory chapter by Basil Reid et alia lays out the volume's organizational logic; establishes its geographical, cultural, and chronological framework; and offers basic definitions (e.g., farming, cultivation, agriculture).

Part I focuses on food production strategies in the Caribbean from a regional perspective. In the first chapter, Scott Fitzpatrick develops an historical ecology perspective toward tracing the history of food production in the greater Caribbean region. Among other things, he points out the absence of intensive food production techniques in the Caribbean, which tend to be one of the landmarks of clear social stratification. Peter Siegel et alia use sediment cores to reconstruct the early landscape management strategies through time in three of the Lesser Antilles and warn that “it is a mistake to apply universal explanations to the origins of agriculture and processes of domestication” (p. 58). Corinne Hofman et alia combine a large amount of already published data to reconstruct patterns of food strategies through time for the whole Caribbean. Next, David Smith et alia use starch grain analysis results to characterize the ancient diet at the Archaic site of Canímar, Cuba. Comparing these results with other sites of the same period shows a diverse range of subsistence strategies. In the last chapter in this section, Andezej Antczak et alia discuss the evidence for early cultivation mainly in the southern Caribbean, including the continental islands (e.g., ABCs, Margarita), and they stress the importance of improving the chronology and the need for more localized paleoenvironmental studies.

Parts II, III, and IV include one chapter each on evidence for animal management and husbandry, rock art, and comparative perspectives on farming practices in the Caribbean and Oceania. Michelle LeFebvre et alia look at several rodent species, including guinea pigs, to discuss their introduction and possible strategies of garden hunting, husbandry, and management in the Antilles. Peter Roe et alia use representations of plants and animals in rock art from different islands and periods to discuss them in terms of food and their semiotic meaning within their social context. In Chapter 8, Reid et alia compare food production in the Caribbean with islands in the South Pacific, identifying similarities and differences in their food strategies.

Part V considers current analytical methodologies for reconstructing farming practices in the Caribbean. The section starts with Caroline Cartwright's discussion of the methodology necessary to reconstruct regional woody resources before human intervention and makes suggestions for the research on this topic in the Caribbean. Identifying changes in soil samples from an Archaic and a late precolumbian site in Puerto Rico, Isabel Rivera-Collazo and Lara Sanchez-Morales argue in Chapter 10 that they were produced by shifts in subsistence strategies through time. William Pestle and Reniel Rodríguez Ramos present the results of a stable isotope study on Archaic human remains from Puerto Rico, and they stress the limitations of the technique and problems with the use of “absolute” terminology such as “agriculture” versus “cultivation.” This section ends with Hayley Mickleburgh and Jason Lafoon demonstrating the benefits of applying multiple analytical techniques (osteological, starch grain, and isotope analysis) on Archaic- and Ceramic-age human remains from Aruba.

Part VI includes case studies about farming societies on the edges of the broader Caribbean world. Traci Ardren et alia discuss the importance of foraging and mobility in the Florida Keys even after the development of social stratification. Nicholas Dunning et alia summarize the shifts of Maya food-production practices due to natural and/or anthropogenic changes of the environment and the landscape. In another chapter about Mesoamerica, Robert Krugger presents the fascinating and long history of maize, from the domestication of teosinte—which may have been initially valued for its sweet sap—to the grain that then spread throughout the Americas. Stéphen Rostain presents an excellent and detailed review of the history and transformation of food production practices in ancient Guianas. Martijn Van Den Bel et alia use multiple lines of evidence (e.g., artifacts, features, starch grains) to detect temporal trends in food processing and cooking techniques in French Guiana.

Altogether, I consider this an excellent volume that covers an extensive geographic and thematic territory. At first, I was perplexed by the inclusion of regions such as the Florida Keys and the Maya area, but in fact, these considerations greatly enrich the book, and they encourage expansive and integrative views of the Caribbean as a dynamic cultural zone.

More importantly, I welcome the call for cautionary approaches in many (but not all) chapters with respect to lower levels of analysis and smaller localities instead of those that use broad (and often untested) generalizations. As we learn more about specific sites and study areas, we are finding that broad perspectives and generalizations are proven wrong, and that there is greater variability in the past in the Caribbean world than we have thought. Should we expect all communities to use the same strategies just because archaeologists classify them culturally as Archaic or Saladoid? After all, modern societies, much like earlier peoples, operate in diverse circumstances and contexts. They, too, are trying to put food on the table. And, as this volume demonstrates, that can be accomplished in many different ways.