Against the Grain is both a wide-ranging voyage of discovery and a regionally focused study of the trajectory of agriculture from its earliest appearance until historical times, coupled with discussion of the mechanisms that maintained early states. For Scott, the state is a fragile entity (pp. 21, 23, 118, 125) based on the production of grain, along with water transport, city walls, tax collection, specialized administrators, monumental centres, kings, social hierarchy, filth, epidemic disease and an insatiable demand for enslaved labour. With such a definition, there is a little hope that the societies of Eurasian pastoral nomads can be seen as anything other than ‘barbarians’ living outside the laws and hierarchies of agricultural states. It is these Eurasian nomadic pastoralists and their relations with the state that will form the focus of this commentary.

Against the Grain is an approachable book that explores the world of the earliest states, found in Mesopotamia. It is framed by the rationale that a study of the state's deep history might give us insight into contemporary concerns via an understanding of the deep causal links between sedentism, agriculture and state control.

The fact that 10 notable scholars have taken the time to examine my book Against the Grain and provide thoughtful commentary is a form of flattery of which I am acutely conscious and very grateful. This would be the case even if their comments had ben totally damning! I braced myself for the onslaught of a phalanx of archaeologists justifiably indignant that a rank amateur should even dare trespass on their turf. When invited to reply to such a symposium convened by the CAJ, the thought crossed my mind that I was being brought to the symposium in the same spirit as the Romans ‘invited’ the Christians to the Coliseum. Happily, while there are gashes, bruises and perhaps a life-threatening wound or two, much of my argument seems to have come through the encounter. One or two of the commentators, I understand, believe they left me for dead!