The product of nigh-on a decade’s worth of research in north-east England, Chris Fowler’s new volume is both an advancement of the general breadth and scope of Bronze Age mortuary research and a thorough and thought-provoking interrogation of the way in which archaeological knowledge and research is conducted and produced. Organisationally, The Emergent Past is subdivided into seven chapters complemented by two appendices. Although the latter present the most pertinent data from the sites discussed in the text, most admirably, Fowler has archived substantive descriptions of said sites (including information about spatial location, cist dimensions, artefact descriptions, and so on) with the Archaeology Data Service, and these are are freely available for download.

To return to the text, the arrangement of Fowler’s monograph, although also well acquitted, is less transparent than that of his data. Following a succinct introduction, he embarks on a sequence of theoretical discussions (for example, ‘theories as actants’ and ‘unpacking black boxes’), followed by a section which engages with the chief themes within Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age research in north-east England. As scholars of the Bronze Age are well aware, this particular corner of Europe has long been given short shrift in both pan-European and even national studies. Fowler’s discussion, therefore, not only brings light to an otherwise hazy prehistoric region, but also critically assesses concepts within Bronze Age research that have, perhaps, too long been regarded as faits accomplis (for instance, the blade/warrior paradigm and the foreign/elite/status equivalency). The author’s strengths are also his greatest weaknesses in this regard; rather than formulating his investigations along the lines of what his research shows to be ‘true’ or ‘false’, he characterises interpretations of the past as being ‘stronger’ or ‘weaker’ than others.

This viewpoint is very much an expression of Fowler’s overall take on archaeological investigations: namely, that they are a means of crafting the past in the present. Although this idea is not new in and of itself, Fowler’s discussion thereof yields some fascinating developments. Archaeological happenings, he argues, should not be studied in terms of cause and effect, but rather as contributing partners in events that are in a constant state of development. From this theoretical standpoint, Fowler’s investigation of the material is undertaken with an engaged clutch; he writes that the various assemblages which he examines are ‘nested within one another as regions in a greater assemblage, and the greatest assemblage of all is reality as a whole …’ (p 258). While one might call such a reading of the past ‘soft’, this theoretical proposition of borderless becoming and connectivity across material, time, space and persons is framed by a brilliant theoretical mind underpinned not only by a mastery of the more erudite theoretical concepts, but also by significant original thought. This very fluidity allows the author to make some other extremely interesting suggestions: that the inclusion of knives within the mortuary context might have less to do with what we have long considered warriorhood and more to do with the abstract cutting of ties, and that what scholars have erstwhile assumed to be the expression of living status in the grave might be indicative of respect for the deceased.

Indeed, the very wide-ranging character of Fowler’s outlook and the infinite connectivity of the patterns he seeks to describe bring to light some of the weaker points in his argument. While the theoretical discussion in The Emergent Past draws associations between all archaeological events, his discussion was necessarily limited to the presentation of the (admittedly new and much-needed!) Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices within north-east England. While the author freely admits that the emergent processes he describes were likely to have extended (both chronologically and geographically) beyond the region under discussion, the text might have benefited from more explicit parallels between the processes of the mortuary sphere and the ways in which those were likely to have been affected by other areas (such as settlement). In this regard, The Emergent Past reads like an academically tantalising preliminary to future work. In the meantime, Fowler’s new publication keeps him on the required reading lists of theoreticians and Bronze Age scholars alike.