This substantial and highly informative book develops a theoretically informed study of the interactions that occurred between the indigenous peoples of Mediterranean France and the Etruscan, Greek and Roman colonists with whom they came into contact. It focuses on the period from the late seventh century b.c. until the end of the millennium when the area effectively became incorporated into the Roman Empire under Augustus. Dietler has been undertaking research in France for the past 30 years, including several projects that have addressed Late Iron Age and Roman society. He draws on archaeological materials and texts to explore these colonial encounters, addressing continuity and change over a period of more than six centuries. The main focus is on material culture, including urban landscapes, economic practices, and various forms of both indigenous and colonially imposed violence. As such, the volume aims to provide an up-to-date summary of the state of play of archaeological research across south-eastern France. It provides a very useful summary in English of a wide variety of ideas, materials and sources.

In particular, D. draws on recent works that have addressed identities, including so-called ‘post-colonial’ approaches, in order to demonstrate how the selective consumption of certain goods imported from the Mediterranean helped to link native societies and colonists. He also addresses the ways that these contacts created transformative relationships for all those involved. The core of the volume includes a detailed study of consumption, entanglement and colonialism, involving landscapes, trade, culinary encounters, violence and ritual. These case studies draw on extensive sources of information and are well illustrated with materials from both archaeological research and relevant Classical writings.

D. emphasises the value of his approach in the first two chapters by considering how modern consciousness has been ‘colonised’ by the perspectives included in the Greek and Roman textual sources. This has coloured the ways that ancient historians and archaeologists have interpreted this period of colonial encounter (14). With recent ‘post-colonial’ writings about Classical societies in mind, D. also examines the role that ancient encounters, including models derived from Classical Greece and Rome, played in the formation of modern European identity, colonial ideology, and practices during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (explored in detail in ch. 2). The study includes a consideration of the potential and limitations of ideas of hybridity that have been adopted in some recent ‘post-colonial’ archaeological accounts. D. prefers the idea of a process of entanglement in the complex relations of economic and political power that arose out of these particular colonial encounters (52–3). This aspect is developed in detail in ch. 3 through ‘an archaeology of consumption’ which draws comparisons and contrasts with modern colonial contexts. D.'s exploration of archaeological materials includes the distribution of trade goods, for example amphora and pottery, exploring why alien foods were desired, and also the development of economic and political landscapes. Ch. 6 provides a detailed study of colonial history of violence, including warfare and other forms of aggression against the person, drawing on the rich materials derived from Iron Age France.

D. argues, in particular, that the nature of the encounters between seaborne intruders from Mediterranean city states and the indigenous people of western Europe lies at the heart of concepts of contemporary European identity (3). As such, his book explores some of the problems that need to be addressed by archaeologists attempting to re-examine societies on the edge of Mediterranean expansion during the first millennium a.d. ‘Post-colonial’ archaeologies have formed a major area of debate in Roman archaeology for the past 16 years but the potential of such approaches for the materials derived from the later first millennium b.c. has not previously been addressed in such detail. As a result, the perspectives that D. provides help to raise significant points that need to be addressed through future scholarship and fieldwork. This requires a reflexive awareness as part of a dialectical process that opens up new questions and enables new insights (4).

At the end, D. defines five phases in the encounters between Mediterranean travellers and indigenous peoples: (1) ‘Floater Trade, Entanglement and Accommodation (625–600 b.c.e.)’, (2) ‘Colonial Settlement and Emerging Emporia (600–450 b.c.e.)’, (3) ‘Urban Stability, Fluctuating Trade, and New Colonial Settlements (450–300 b.c.e.)’, (4) ‘Increasing Conflict and Social Transformation (300–125 b.c.e.)', (5) ‘Roman Conquest and Colonization (125–25 b.c.e.)'. These phases provide a useful framework for the study area and a structure on which more detailed local studies can be built. This will help to show whether the framework adequately addresses the complexities of colonial relations on the ground. In the final section of the conclusion, D. draws out the contrast in modes of colonial contact prior to and after Augustus (345–6). Although this study ends some time prior to the Roman invasion of Britain in a.d. 43, much of the theoretical framework is directly relevant to scholars studying late Iron Age and early Roman Britain.