Rock art in the Alps, centred on just two expansive sites, complements the many Scandinavian sites as a major source for open-air art in later European prehistory. A revelatory biography of one of the pioneering researchers there, published simultaneously with a superb monograph on a single rich surface of Alpine art, prompts this review of how we have studied, how we presently study and how we may come to study that art.

Over 30 years ago, Paul Minnis (1985) proposed the distinction between ‘pristine domestication’ and ‘primary crop acquisition’. The former refers to the initial domestication of wild plant resources and is characterised by only a dozen or so places in the world, most notably China, the Near East and Mesoamerica. The latter refers to the local integration of crops that were domesticated elsewhere and is the more common process. The American Southwest, here defined as the U.S. states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua, is a classic case of primary crop acquisition. Cultigens, first maize and then squash and beans, originally domesticated in Mesoamerica, were brought north by immigrant groups who joined with local hunter-gatherer communities. The introduction of these cultigens did not initiate major immediate changes in ecological or social relationships, instead the shift to agriculture as the central subsistence practice took millennia. Just why this is the case continues to be hotly debated. The two volumes under review offer new data and valuable syntheses relevant to scholars interested in the interrelationships between the adoption of cultigens, mixed mobility strategies, and trade and exchange relationships.

The organising entity is the Fondazione Paestum, which has a focus on comparative studies of colonial activity in the Mediterranean. The conference was just one of a series of extraordinary events and refurbishments that have taken place at Paestum recently; a second conference has just been published and a third is in preparation. The conferences are aligned with another major event at Paestum, and one of Italy's most important cultural tourism events, the Borsa Mediterranea del Turismo Archeologico (an international trade show for the travel and tourism industry). Paestum, a colony itself both in the sense of a Greek foundation, and then a Roman resettlement, is well suited therefore to host discussions that touch on mobility, hybridity and the interpenetration of culture as visible in the material record.

Textiles and clothing are fundamental aspects of everyday life in the past but are often overlooked in archaeology. Fortunately, this is changing, as witnessed by three new books, reviewed here. Two deal with the beginnings of clothing and textile production, but in different ways; the third contains contributions reflecting on this theme. The monograph by Ian Gilligan—a polyhistory of medicine, psychology, prehistoric archaeology and biological anthropology—presents new theories on the emergence of clothing and textiles in a sustained argument; the two other books, edited volumes comprising 29 papers by textile specialists, each present new research on different aspects of ancient textiles and clothing. In several cases, authors disagree, enhancing the value of the debates, and adding to our understanding of the impact on society of ancient textile production and clothing.

Bioarchaeology of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: an interdisciplinary approach is the latest volume in a series from the University Press of Florida ‘Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives’, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen. With this contribution the series now comprises 20 published volumes that take a bioarchaeological approach to the study of ancient human remains from various regions and time periods. Bioarchaeology is a term that was introduced in the USA in the late 1970s by biological anthropologist Jane Buikstra to describe the application of biological anthropology to archaeological research questions. Its use has become increasingly common in recent decades among scholars in the USA, Latin America and Europe, although in the UK the term Osteoarchaeology is more commonly used to describe this research. Whichever name one prefers, a common thread is the shift from typological and descriptive osteological monographs towards an emphasis on applying theoretical models and interdisciplinary approaches to reconstructing the life histories, health and population dynamics of past societies from the analysis of human remains.

Whereas Sarr and Savoy (2018) focus on artefacts taken from various African countries after 1885, Incidental archaeologists, considers “the first four decades of the French conquest and pacification of Algeria under the authority of the French military Government General” (p. 24). Throughout the volume, Effros presents a convincing argument in which the social history of military infrastructure lays the groundwork for the future of the French civilising mission. She is clear about the magnitude of the task that the book is engaged in; it provides links between early French archaeologists and epigraphers and their place within the development of the disciplines. It also considers the ways by which romanticised narratives, created by French officers, about the classical archaeology of Algeria led to irresponsible destruction of antiquity, violence against local resistant populations and classifications that became constitutive of colonial archaeological interest and practice.

The series of volumes edited by Joseph Carter on the rural landscape around the Greek colony of Metapontum in southern Italy represent a slow but steady revolution in the field of Classical studies. This latest addition to the series presents the results of excavations at the rural site of Pantanello, near modern Metaponto, first launched by the Institute of Classical Archaeology of the University of Austin in 1974. At that time, Classical archaeologists concentrated almost entirely on urban contexts, especially temples and public buildings. Rural sites were of interest only if they featured in the literary sources. To initiate fieldwork at an anonymous rural location such as Pantanello, where only some roof tiles and stone blocks were visible, was therefore a courageous undertaking for a young scholar such as Joe Carter at that time. That fieldwork, however, has proved to be seminal, not only because of the broad range of data that have been brought to light by Carter and his international team, but also because of the meticulous publication of the results in a series of high-quality volumes that have set a new benchmark. The volume under review, The Greek sanctuary at Pantanello, comprises three sub-volumes, totalling 1678 pages.