This is a not quite conventional burial publication, based on a doctoral thesis passed in 2010. It combines part publication of three excavations with a synthesis of burial practice in rural northern France in the first to third centuries a.d. The principal focus lies on cremation rituals, privileging Ancel's own analysis of cremated human bone as its main evidence. It examines the features met in cemetery excavation: monuments, pyres, surface spreads and buried deposits of material consumed in rituals as well as burials themselves; cemetery layout and landscape setting are also investigated. Its principal readerships will be those interested in Roman Gaul, its funerary culture and rural societies, and/or in methods for reconstructing cremation rituals in the Roman and other periods.

The title slightly misleads as A. exploits data from two non-contiguous regions, Lorraine and Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The study partially updates a ‘classic’ of Roman funerary archaeology, van Doorsaeler's 1967 synthesis of burial practice in northern Gaul, and complements a similar investigation focused on central and south-eastern France (Gallia 66 (2009)). With the latter A. shares a distinctive perspective on Roman funerary archaeology in which two intellectual traditions converge, analysis of burial ritual as a system of sacrifices, inspired by J. Scheid, and examination of human skeletal taphonomy as evidence for ritual process, developed by H. Duday and colleagues. These studies reveal the potential for more direct translation of research questions into fieldwork where facilitated by close links between developer-funded archaeology and universities in France.

A short first section gives clear if schematic frameworks for the study regions, their Iron Age and Roman histories and settlement patterns, as well as the historiography of the study of cremated bone and of regional funerary archaeology. Discussion of methodology prefaces the analysis of case studies in section 2: 90 and 14 burials and related features respectively from Mécleuves, near Metz (later first to third century), and suburban Lens (first century), and 10 burial-related features, but no burials, excavated near Contrexéville, Vosges (later first to early second century). All three sites are associated with modest rural settlements. In each case detailed study of cremated bone, burial subject, weight, fragmentation, colour, anatomical representation, depositional sequence and so on follows a consideration of setting, chronology and layout and the description of burials and other excavated features. The third section expands the scope to the administrative regions in which these sites are located. Again it explores the relationship of cemeteries to settlement, land divisions, roads and so on, revealing some significant regional differences in burial dispersal and agglomeration. Cemetery layout, deposit types and what can be reconstructed of burial rituals are then considered, including their relationship to social identity, especially age, sex and status. The conclusion is followed by a long catalogue of burials and associated deposits from the three case studies and of rural burial sites in the study regions (350 pages).

The book demonstrates the analytical potential for informing burial ritual through a study of this kind. Space allows only a passing mention here of the more than usually detailed understanding of the sequence of collecting and burying cremated bone documented by A. through laboratory excavation of many block-lifted cremation deposits. The diversity of surviving cemetery features deserves particular emphasis. Although pyre sites are absent from the case studies (though documented with varying specificity elsewhere), other non-burial features are found in some abundance, especially at Mécleuves where fosses à offrandes (one with a mass of burnt and broken artefacts, the other a smaller ‘structured deposit’ including a scythe or sickle blade) and surface spreads of charcoal, ceramics, glass and scraps of burnt human and animal bone are documented. At Contrexéville a pit with a cooking vessel and containing pockets of charcoal, sherds and scraps of animal bone, as well as a tiny quantity of cremated human bone, is interpreted as a hearth for a para-burial ritual, with debris deposits interred nearby. The analysis reveals sequences of acts focused not only on the corpse but also on the staged destruction of materials, either in toto through burial or burning or as the residue of meals consumed by the living. Ritual complexity contrasts with the modest character of the objects and food remains, with one significant exception; at Mécleuves the assemblage of the larger fosse à offrandes (a.d. 50–80) is exceptionally rich and diverse, containing thousands of sherds (among which are the remains of 53 amphorae), casket fittings in metal and bone, glass, ironwork and eight kilos of burnt animal bone. Joins between fragments of worked bone in this pit and in a neighbouring grave indicate a connection to the ceremony for an individual whose burial otherwise stands out little from the rest. This qualifies the impression otherwise given of burying populations with limited resources and/or differentiation among their dead. At Mécleuves and another Lorraine site (St Quirin, Moselle) good preservation of cemetery surfaces also reveals differentiation among burial markers, including occasional stone-built monuments and evidence for more ephemeral arrangements normally lost to truncation, such as heaped stones, tiles and wooden markers.

There are weaknesses to this report. Application of modern administrative boundaries for data collection means that the frequencies of burial characteristics for different civitates in section 3, some represented by small fractions of their ancient territories, are of limited use. Extensive tabulation of anatomical distribution of cremated bone from single contexts (some artefacts, e.g. bone elements from caskets, are not documented) makes for a very large catalogue but does not facilitate reworking of data. Application of GIS analysis would have enriched understanding of landscape context. There is limited discussion of the ways in which these small rural communities expressed their local, regional or wider identities through burial, or of the impact of wider change on burial traditions. However these criticisms should not detract from the value of this key study for showing how a decentring of the traditional focus of much burial archaeology, the object, whether grave good or container, in favour of the funerary process can lead to new understandings.