Roberta Gilchrist, a leading figure in the archaeology of medieval England, has taken the discipline beyond dry reports of trenches dug, artefacts found and bones analysed. Her writing has never been in the sterile passive voice of a field report; rather her books have always provided a historical context for her research. Particularly engaging have been the books that explore the environment of women in religious and secular contexts. The current book is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary work that draws on historical, literary, anthropological and artistic studies to flesh out, if one may use the term, the bones of archaeology. The trend to integrate archaeology into more mainstream historical writing has become increasingly important in recent years and has enriched historical interpretation, but few do this type of analysis as well as Gilchrist.

Gilchrist has taken as her model life course analysis that has been used extensively by historical demographers, but hers is the first that is written by an anthropologist. In her first chapter she discusses the theoretical approaches available for such a longitudinal study that extends from before birth to after death. Passing through the ‘life stages’ is not simply biological, but also subject to the forces of the culture in which one lives and the measures of time. Ecclesiastical time in the Middle Ages, for instance, could determine diet (Lent), sexual activity within marriage, and life after death. Funerary arrangements, for instance, are evidence in burial that the archaeologists have studied in detail. Biomedical evidence from bones tells about aging and its complaints, but also about the problems of the young and the influence of diet on life. To capture these variations, Gilchrist has used a biographical approach, which does not track individuals through life, but does look at the problems occurring at different life stages.

In chapters ii and iii she looks at the various medieval theories of the stages of life, but the original contribution is introducing osteological information about the lives people lived. The Black Death was more devastating for men than for women, particularly for young men in the mass graves in London. The bones of Wharram Percy, a peasant village in Yorkshire, shows the trauma of repetitive work, such as hip and knee problems for women who must have cooked over fires in the centre of the room and spinal problems from carrying heavy loads. Malnutrition slowed the growth of medieval children and perhaps contributed to the delayed adolescence that led to the northern European marriage pattern of marriage in the twenties. Two crisis burials, that of the Battle of Towton (1461), and the sinking of the Mary Rose in the early sixteenth century, provide extensive information on young men who fought. Skeletal remains at Towton are a particularly grim reminder of how brutal hand to hand fighting was in the Middle Ages and how young most of the combatants were. In chapter iii Gilchrist compares the material remains, shoes, clothing, badges, to the way that they signified social categories such as the increasingly sexually explicit clothing of young men in the late Middle Ages, the symbiotic significance of women's headdress and hair, and the various remains discovered in archaeological sites. For instance, bunions apparently were a significant problem and had to be accommodated by slitting the shoes to let the foot expand.

Chapter iv, on the medieval household, benefits from extensive supporting materials to interpret the archaeological evidence. In keeping with the organising principle of the book, the structure is the life course, covering birthing (with an interesting find of a jet bowl perhaps used as an amulet to ease childbirth), toys for children, the floor plans of houses, and the various religious objects found in the houses. Chapter v moves to areas that rely more directly on excavations that Gilchrist has done herself involving parish churches and medieval cemeteries. Here the correspondence between the manuals for parish priests and evidence for such practices as the disposal of used altar cloths and even baptismal fonts, is fascinating. As directed the cloths were burnt and the slurry of ash poured in a hole in the church floor. Fonts were found buried under the new fonts. The churching of women inspired crude sculptures in the church porches, perhaps indicating women who had given birth. It is, of course, the graveyards that yield the richest information. The afterlife was of major concern to medieval Christians so that the positioning of the body and the objects placed in the graves give insights into the anxieties of the living about the passage of the dead. Sometimes the lead seal of a papal bull was found; perhaps indicating an indulgence buried with the dead. The occasional manacles and nails may represent a fear that the corpse would rise again as a ghost. Although apotropaic materials were common in rural and urban settings, they were not among the grave goods. Very young children were buried on the west side of the church, perhaps to extend the benefit of their baptism rather than as a sign that they were less valued.

The final chapter discusses the interaction between humans and objects. Did relics, for instance, have agency? Pilgrim badges, shells from pilgrim sites, church bells inscribed with the name of a saint all had efficacious benefits. Amulets warded off demons. In addition to these objects, archaeology has turned up evidence that caches of clothing, dead animals and, particularly, shoes and pots were buried in medieval houses in a magical rite of protecting the dwelling. Stone Age artefacts, such as axes, were regarded as the product of thunderbolts and would protect a house from lightening. Heirlooms, such as fine jugs and pots, passed from generation to generation and were mended to continue their value in passing on family memory. They were material objects, but they served as an agent for family identity.

Gilchrist's book deserves a wide readership among medievalists of all disciplines. Her willingness to engage so many sources and interpretations and the lavish illustrations of her argument make the book a model of interdisciplinary study.