What is remarkable is that their successful farming is based entirely on indigenous methods, without outside intervention, in an area surrounded by failed development projects. Left alone to devise their own farming and to organize their own landscape, the Kofyar offer a series of important theoretical and practical lessons. Stone's research draws on colonial archives, earlier anthropological records, his own extensive fieldwork and analysis of aerial photographs. It documents the effects of rising population on agriculture and the subsequent adjustments in social organization of production and political organization of the landscape. The book has drawn praise from scholars in several fields.
Stone opens new horizons on the study of settlements.