Cultivated Landscapes of Middle America on the Eve of Conquest (review)

tility. And finally, farmers in New England generally enjoyed enough rain for cultivation, but needed to enhance soil fertility in an environment characterized by winter’s biological slowdowns. We see that like farmers and land users elsewhere, the native cultivators of North America developed efficient, environmentally appropriate systems of farming, a lesson that can never be overstated as development and food supply specialists strive to find alternatives to green revolution monocultures. The second lesson that we can take from Cultivated Landscapes of Native North America is that thorough, exhaustive reviews of primary research can lend important insights to the past, and presumably to the present. Aboriginal people did not only possess unique cultural configurations to Doolittle, they profoundly altered the physical character of regions in the pursuit of food production. And in this endeavor the farmers of native North America were successful. The New World agricultural revolution rivaled that of the Old World, developing techniques and crops, both currently used and forgotten, that enabled population growth, socially complex civilizations, and cultural diversification. Doolittle’s Cultivated Landscapes of Native North America is suitable for students and scholars of prehistoric and modern agriculture and those interested in aboriginal American cultures. For the student of history and archaeology the book can teach the reader how to do thorough, confirmatory research of seemingly untouchable pasts. While dense, this book is a must read for scholars interested in pre-European life in the Americas, although its density may put it out of reach for all but the most intrepid undergraduate students.