While the book intends to show how the Indus archaeobotanical field is far from sparse and the poor handmaiden of other Bronze Age regions, it is important to acknowledge the state of the data set, and Chapter 3 heads up issues and areas we must work on before diving into the rest of the book. The dispersal of data across regions, the nature of the reported remains and the methods used to collect them are clearly defined in this early chapter so no shocks or surprises are found in the rest of the book.

The book is introduced by outlining a straw man: the Indus had a core of wheat growing, a periphery of millets, and there are very little data to use to explore anything further. The simplicity of this straw man, that it is a straw man, is quickly knocked down and the premise of the book is set up to show that the Indus archaeobotanical field is vibrant and detailed and that we have long moved beyond this old, tired straw man.

Indus agriculture has typically been seen as a binary: winter or summer, based on seasonal rains. In Chapter 12, the implications of binarism on models of Indus complexity are questioned and multi-cropping and farmer agency are brought to the fore.

Using the combined skills of macrobotanical and microbotanical remains, it has been recognized that cereals and pulses, the typical staple foods, were not the only Indus foods exploited and we must broaden our thinking to the less densely found but also ubiquitous ‘other things’. These fruits, oilseeds, vegetal plants and spices made the Indus a vibrant food scene.

Continuing with millets, the even less commonly explored small millets are dived into with detailed exploration not only of the overidentified Eleusine, the more discussed foxtails and broomcorn, but also wild and weedy native species. The question of local Indus domestication processes is considered.

With the preliminary background defined, the first two taxa of interest are explored in Chapter 4: wheat and barley. These crops have formed much of the Indus agricultural discussions, and so the origins of these – how they get to the Indus and what happens when they are in the Indus – is focused on.

Cereals were not the only crop Indus peoples were growing and eating, and pulses formed a significant proportion of their food. Tropical pulses are of particular interest as these link the subcontinent in narratives of trade and domestication.

To move beyond a wheat/barley-dominated discussion, the less-explored millets become the focus of the next two chapters. Splitting them into ‘big’ and ‘small’, Chapter 5 looks at how Sorghum and Pennisetum have been used to make arguments about African–Indus contact and Late Harappan changes in cropping, and whether the data support this.

While macrobotanical remains are the typical remains for study, Indus scholars have been very quick to take up and include new data from the realm of the microbotanical, especially phytoliths and starch. In this chapter the mechanisms of preservation, data comparability and types of questions that remain are explored with case studies across the Indus.

All things must end, and the Indus was the same. However, why it ended has remained a big topic of debate, and food, especially plant food, has played a big role in the debates. The impact of the 4.2k climate event, changing water availability and variable resilience is linked with this, so Chapter 15 draws on environmental debates from earlier chapters and combines them with what has been learnt about the Indus throughout the course of the book to suggest that it is not a simple story anymore.

In order to lay out the context for the book, the environmental context is explored in Chapter 2. The sheer diversity of a civilization covering two rainfall systems, several river plains and multiple eco-zones is described and the mechanisms of climate change, the 4.2 k, are noted.

In the final chapter, the straw man of the introduction is laid to rest – the Indus can no longer be seen as dull and homogenous and based on a few crops, but must instead be seen as vibrant and complex. The final chapter again acknowledges, though, that we have known this for a long time and we should stop rehashing the straw man and instead look to the future, outlining some new avenues for research instead.

Much of what has occurred within the book up to Chapter 14 has been from the point of view of agriculture – where did the plants come from, how were they grown, what systems did this intertwine with? Chapter 14 turns these questions around and asks why farmers were growing these crops. What was the end goal? Foodways theory has begun to play a big role in Indus archaeobotany and in this chapter, the basic reason for growing (many of the) plants – food – is considered, and how taste and choices influenced diversity across the region is also examined.

Having established what Indus peoples had and where it came from, it is incumbent on us to ask what they were actually doing with it. Chapter 11 takes a more theoretical turn in the book by looking at the questions Indus scholars have asked of the data, starting with how agriculture has been used to think about labour organization and with that social organization at large.