Review: Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California edited by Kathleen L. Hull and John G. Douglass

Forging Communities, a volume of recent archaeological and ethnohistorical scholarship, offers nine case studies, an introduction, and an epilogue that analyze Native Californians’ strategies for preserving ceremonial activities, material production, and community identities in the wake of colonialism. The contributors’ focus on community formation takes readers outside of the usual colonial spaces like missions, pueblos, or presidios. While the authors acknowledge that colonial conditions devastated communities or limited Native peoples’ options for survival, a significant contribution of this volume is that it demonstrates the multiplicity of communities that existed in Spanish, Mexican, and early American California (134–141). The studies offer examples of varied political, economic, and cultural connections between missionized and nonmissionized peoples, the establishment of multiethnic Native communities at missions, ranchos, and pueblos, and connections between Natives and nonNatives, thus offering readers a deeper appreciation of the varied forms of belonging and social obligations that existed historically across vast distances. The authors avoid a hard distinction between the precolonial and colonial, highlighting instead tactics and strategies of community formation and communal belonging dating back hundreds and even thousands of years (12, 21). The volume