American Journal of Archaeology

While study of historic periods continues to dominate much of the literature on the archaeology of Greece, work on the Neolithic period has advanced along many fronts in terms of the number of sites investigated, the depth of analysis, and the range of interdisciplinary activities, bringing the prehistoric landscape into clearer focus. The contributors to this volume on Alepotrypa Cave provide a comprehensive view of activities in the cave over a number of millennia, with evidence particularly abundant for the Late and Final Neolithic phases.

For as long as humans have been constructing monuments, the product (whether a tomb, palace, temple, memorial, or other) has held a place not only within the physical landscape but also as a part of the social, political, and economic environment of the culture in which it was built. This book examines how the archaeological record may be utilized to interpret how monuments reflected their respective societies, not only in the physicality of the structure in its environs but also in the processes, via material and human resources, of construction.

Horn and Kristiansen’s volume Warfare in Bronze Age Society presents the revised contributions to a conference held at the University of Gothenburg in 2012. The book has 15 chapters, including an introduction by the editors, a short scene-setting chapter, and a conclusion. The chapters vary in their geographical focus and in the types of evidence they interrogate, achieving impressive coverage.

This volume, born out of a workshop of the same name held at the University of Oxford in 2013, includes contributions on graffiti ranging from inscriptions in the Memphite pyramid complexes (1543–1292 B.C.E.) to annotations in digital reading platforms (present day). While the scope of the book is diachronic and cross-regional, the methodology of each author has much in common.

Determination of cultural frontiers has become an important goal of archaeological research. Beaule, an Andean archaeologist specializing in the study of households, has assembled the work of 15 scholars to address “frontiers” as they are variously conceptualized in archaeology. In this book, she recognizes not only the geopolitical frontiers that are basic to understanding culture and culture history, but also boundaries created by chronology, methodology, and theory. Crossing these many “frontiers” is the primary concern of this volume.

Assessments of social complexity from material culture remains have been a long-standing challenge within archaeology. In their edited volume Bones of Complexity, Klaus and colleagues advocate that human skeletal remains are important for addressing questions of social complexity and variability.

The Power of Ritual in Prehistory takes us on a journey through the Old and New Worlds, examining ethnographic evidence for secret societies with a view to enriching our archaeological interpretations of prehistoric cultures. As stated in the book’s summary, it is the first book in decades that addresses secret societies in a comparative perspective and the first from an archaeological perspective.

Where are we heading? Hodder’s first “popular” science book is a compact, challenging, and thought-provoking read, designed, like other volumes in the Foundational Questions in Science series, to examine philosophical assumptions undergirding research on important questions. Hodder’s book does not so much answer questions in this case as examine a long-term trajectory.