This volume offers a compelling interdisciplinary assessment of how prehistoric and modern indigenous societies have managed common pool resources in a multitude of successful (and not so successful) ways. In particular, the authors challenge Garrett Hardin's argument in “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Science 162:1243–1248, 1968), which asserts that, without centralized management (e.g., elite decision making, government), the commons will be overused and degraded through the accumulation of unsustainable individual actions. Using a range of prehistoric, historic, and contemporary case studies, the volume continues Elinor Ostrom's 1990 landmark revision of Hardin's thesis (Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action), showing that communities have long conceived and undertaken effective ways to organize collectively and manage common property and common pool resources.

The introductory chapter offers a refreshing dose of optimism by stating that the volume highlights the “joy of the commons” (rather than the dimmer view of the “tragedy of the commons”), an approach that outlines how generosity and cooperation form the basis of collective action to mitigate risk and sustain community well-being. James Acheson offers an important theoretical chapter to guide much of the rest of the book. He uses case studies from Maine (e.g., common forest lands, common marine resources such as lobster) to connect classic economic theory to new conceptions of common property, which is defined by the difficulty of exclusion (of others) and subtractability (of resources). Michael Dove and coauthors continue this thread by highlighting the difficulty of defining the commons, especially when applied across diverse case studies. Especially compelling was their discussion of how the commons is defined by the socially constructed community and how, for example, class and identity distinctions (e.g., tompon-tany women in Madagascar) can translate into asymmetrical access to common resources. Their diverse case studies show how natural resource management of common pool resources is mediated by a web of cultural factors and power structures associated with city, state, national, private, and scientific institutions. A similar cross-cultural analysis is presented by Lee Cronk and colleagues with the Human Generosity Project, who highlight how risk management at its heart is a social and cooperative enterprise. In particular, they show how risk pooling can be exercised via need-based transfers to allow for social groups to absorb economic uncertainty in myriad, flexible ways.

The next two chapters—by Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir and coauthors and by Ludomir Lozny—offer two excellent applications of interdisciplinary research of the commons over time and space. The former provides a fascinating study linking mythology, climate science, history, and archaeology in the Mývatn Basin of northern Iceland. The authors chronicle the sustainable nature of floodplain management of the Framengjar wetland since the first period of colonization (Landnám). In the latter chapter, Lozny offers a related study but from the Pyrenees of southern Europe, where he finds that sheep and cattle pastoralists in the upper mountain valleys were able to manage these commons through a dialectic of cooperation and conflict dynamics.

Chapters by Tobias Haller and coauthors and by Mark Moritz and colleagues present anthropological research from across the continent of Africa. The former takes on the process of modern land grabs by multinational companies (facilitated by government entities) that look to privatize traditional common land for large-scale economic development; the latter highlights how pastoralists in Chad have designed an open access and communally managed system to oversee sustainable grazing practices.

The last four chapters of the volume focus on archaeological case studies, but only two directly address the issue of the commons. Frank Thomas employs a behavioral ecology approach to understand pre-European mollusk-harvesting patterns in Kiribati: he finds mixed results, with some negative (i.e., extinction of giant clams) and positive (i.e., management of mollusk “gardens'') outcomes of indigenous resource management. Equally interesting was Michael Aiuvalasit's geoarchaeological analysis of anthropogenic water features in the precontact/contact period uplands of New Mexico, where he argues that the development of these common pool resources can co-occur, precede, or follow periods of drought, settlement formation, or both, as well as contribute to fragilities in other resource areas.

The volume's massive temporal and geographic scope is both its strength and part of its weakness. Lozny and McGovern ambitiously survey research on the commons from so many fields and perspectives that at times it felt hard to connect all the chapters. Yet, the volume offers a valuable “all hands on deck” transdisciplinary research approach, which can integrate traditional ecological/indigenous knowledge to tackle our earlier and ongoing challenges to effectively manage our common land and common resources on an already overexploited planet.