This volume reflects a revival of interest in matters that previously carried the risk of stereotyping lowland South American indigenous peoples as bloodthirsty. Although that caricature has long been dissolved, the new discourse, which is realist in its treating of what actually happens and suitably culturally relativistic in its contextualising of forms of violence within complex webs of behaviour and culture logic, illustrates ways in which new themes in the social/human sciences can both open up perspectives (the prominence of evolutionary psychology, for example, underscores an interest in a ‘red in tooth and claw’ analysis that has an obvious bearing) as well as recalibrating the meaning of violence in the context of new social landscapes (indigenous peoples challenges to developmental onslaught, as in the case of Kayapo demonstrations against hydroelectric projects, have played – often heavily – on themes of violence).

In line with the title, the contributions to this volume by and large couch questions of violence within the idiom of revenge, that is to say structured, feud-like reciprocal violence, rather than atavism, but the renewal of interest reflects a broader revival of readings, often quite dark and mysterious, of deep forest violence (cf. the kanaíma themes pursued by Whitehead).

The introduction, by Beckerman, stands apart from most of the other contributions in trying to inject into the discussion issues most closely associated, in a lowland South American context, with the work of Chagnon (that is, does violence correlate with reproductive success), but while there is a slight return to those arguments in the rigorous chapter by Erickson, most of the chapters address questions of violence as shaped by the analyses of Raymond Verdier (and, in passing, Evans-Pritchard).

Thematic coherence is sufficient, but the collection does at times seem rather disparate: an article on Inca revenge, for example, is fine in itself, but it is an historical essay (most of the others are ethnographic) as well as one outside the lowlands boundaries. There is clearly a sense in which analysis is converging interestingly around, and recasting, old discussions of violence and revenge, and in this sense the articles individually – and in part collectively – indicate the significant advances available.