Eds. by David Pollack, Anne Tobbe Bader, and Justin N. Carlson, 2021, The Falls of the Ohio River:  Archaeology of Native American Settlement. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. 297 pp. ISBN: 9781683402039.

Key Words: Falls of the Ohio River, Landscape Archaeology, Prehistoric Settlement Patterns, Cultural Resource Management, National Historic Preservation Act, Persistent Place, Fort Ancient

The publication of the edited volume The Falls of the Ohio River:  Archaeology of Native American Settlement provides a welcome addition to the literature on North American prehistoric archaeology. The volume was edited by David Pollack, Anne Tobbe Bader, and Justin N. Carlson and was published by the University of Florida Press. Eleven chapters focus exclusively on the archaeology of a particular region, that of the Falls of the Ohio River at Louisville. The study also encompasses the surrounding region of northern Kentucky and southern Indiana. The approach taken by the editors foregrounds the volume in a landscape archaeology of this particularly rich and varied region of Eastern North America. Most impressive is that many of these researchers have worked extensively and in some cases exclusively in cultural resource management (CRM), which, at its best, is becoming increasingly recast as public archaeology. So, while the academic bona fides of these contributors and contributions are many, the insights gained are very much built on the backs of archaeological work necessitated by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and by public-facing archaeological institutes, such as the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at Indiana University, and the Anthropology Laboratory at Indiana State University.  This is an impressive confluence of researchers, research trends, and findings and advances integrative landscape archaeology of this very important region.

Following an introduction that describes the unique physical environment of the Falls of the Ohio, the chapters are organized by time period and cover broad ranges of topics such as settlement and burial patterning, trophy taking, subsistence, and use of plants by Native American populations. The editors do a wonderful job of summing up what has been learned in a concluding chapter, which focuses on the perspective of landscape archaeology.

The reader will learn a great many things by engaging with this book. As a researcher who occasionally works in this region, I was struck by how much the state of knowledge has advanced recently. I provide a brief summary and comments on the chapters. The first contribution, by C. Russell Stafford, focuses on several important Early Archaic Kirk-related sites, investigations of which were occasioned by the Caesars Archaeological Project. The NHPA necessitated these investigations prior to the construction of a casino.  Stafford details the finds of hundreds of Kirk Corner Notched and other Early Archaic projectile points, and a significant area for exploitation of regional cherts. Also, the geomorphology of this section of the Ohio River Valley is well described and explained.

Chapters 3-8 make up what for me is the heart of the volume, the analysis of Middle and Late Archaic cultures in the Falls Region. Readers are treated to in-depth explorations of Middle Archaic lifeways (Carlson et al.), the late Middle/early Late Archaic Scottsburg phase, newly defined by Bader, and descriptions of a well-excavated buried site at RiverPark, where a stratified burial series was documented (Duane B. Simpson and Stephen T. Mocas). Particularly, I found the attention to diachronic analysis by Simpson and Mocas to be worthwhile.  Rick Burdin discusses evidence for Late Archaic-period increased sedentism at the Falls of Ohio. His review of pit house architecture and signaling through use of bone pins and bannerstones is noteworthy in how he ties disparate material culture media to larger trends. The exploration of trophy taking of skulls and forelimbs by Christopher W. Schmidt is exemplary in marrying primary