Picking up a book is all about expectations. I admit that I expected a new book on Life and Death in the Mesolithic of Sweden published by an international academic press to present me with the state of the art of Mesolithic research, including the dominant trends in how we understand the period, and a synthesis of the exciting new research that is currently reshaping our understanding of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in what is today Sweden. This book is not that. Rather, it is a comprehensive catalogue of sites and archaeological materials found in Sweden. And, in all fairness, a book should be judged on its own merits—and this one, of course, has some.

The book consists of an introduction and eleven consecutive chapters, each dedicated to a specific geographical region, often determined by landscape character (e.g. referring to landscape features such as forests and archipelagos) but still keeping to the administrative boundaries of the provinces of Sweden, starting in the South and moving North. The presentation of the materials is characterized by a descriptive approach, at times complemented with notes about the research history and, even more rarely, accompanied by briefly formulated references to interpretations. This is somewhat disappointing given that the title of the book Life and Death in the Mesolithic of Sweden signals more of the latter sort of material. The descriptive approach also results in chapters of extremely varying length. The longest chapter (Ch. 2) dedicated to Scania (and somewhat to Denmark) is thirty-four pages long, while Chapter 5, ‘Seal Hunters on Gotland’ and Chapter 6, ‘Into the Forest’, are three and two pages respectively, and Chapter 9, ‘Moving Inland’, covering Västmanland, Närke, and Dalarna, covers barely a page. This reflects the logic of the book, proceeding mainly by presenting sites and finds rather than focusing on research questions and interpretations, but it also seems like a questionable editorial choice. I wish the landscape approach in the chapter titles had been consistently pushed further and allowed really to constitute a backdrop to each chapter, setting the stage for the presentation of the archaeological remains of the hunter-gatherer-fishers who once lived there. That would have provided a coherence to the organization of the book that could also be connected to a range of theoretical approaches to enrich the presentation in a consistent and significant way. This potential remains largely untapped as the text never really moves from the level of presentation of the evidence to a level of interpretation. The main strength of the current presentation is the inclusion of several relatively recently found sites, and the book thus acts to fill in the map of Mesolithic sites in Sweden in a handy format that is easy to consult. Judged on its own merits, the book thus provides a useful summary.

But there are also many limitations to this book. Judging from the title, one could expect an exposé of life and death in Mesolithic Sweden based on the author's interpretation of the material presented. But there is no clear thesis or idea driving the presentation, and there is not really any systematic attempt at interpreting the material beyond accounting for its diverse and rich character. Another assumption could be that this is a synthesis of scholarship by others, but if that was the ambition, and I doubt it, it is incomplete. The only reference to developments in contemporary Mesolithic research is a mention at the end of the Introduction of the 2000 conference in Stockholm entitled Mesolithic on the Move, and the importance of shifting from a focus on individual sites to a landscape approach. For a book published in 2017 this statement seems a bit obsolete. Research into the Mesolithic has been on the move since 2000, and over the past almost two decades it has made significant strides that remain unaccounted for in this synthesis. This is unfortunate. From a European perspective, the big changes in the field have been twofold: first the shift to include more interpretative approaches that have refocused interest to include aspects such as cosmology and ritual; and second—and equally important—the impact of laboratory-based scientific methods on our understanding of the period. Swedish archaeology has played a part in leading these developments. One would expect that a survey book like this one would include this scholarship as well, but the impact of these important shifts in Mesolithic archaeology goes more or less unnoticed, except in relation to the discovery of new sites.

The citation practices appear unusual to me. The references mentioned in relation to different sites are often rather old, and it appears that new work carried out since the initial publications has not been of particular interest to the author. More recent sites are of course viewed as new results worth citing and are therefore up to date. This reinforces the impression that the book is focused on sites and discoveries in the field, at the expense of continuing analysis and new interpretations of previously excavated materials. Interpretations, in particular, are often not referenced at all. A good example of this is the discussion of shamanism (p. 18) that, with the exception of Peter Jordan, contains no reference to the scholars who in different ways have made important contributions to the discussion of shamanism and hunter-gatherer cosmology and ontology over the past twenty years (e.g. Chantal Conneller's work on shapeshifting and masks in Star Carr (Conneller, Reference Conneller2004), Ingrid Fuglestvedt's ontological reading of rock art (e.g. Fuglestvedt, Reference Fuglestvedt2017), Rob Schmidt's and Jimmy Strassburg's analysis bringing in gender identity and sexuality and how they are manifested symbolically as part of the interpretation of Mesolithic burials (Schmidt, Reference Schmidt, Schmidt and Voss2000; Strassburg, Reference Strassburg2000), and Marek Zvelebil's proposed model of a shamanist ontology for Mesolithic Northern Europe (Zvelebil, Reference Zvelebil, Larsson, Kindgren, Loeffler and Åkerlund2003)). For an academic book, there are extremely few in-text citations overall. This makes it very difficult for the reader to evaluate the information presented and even to use it as a source to locate other publications on the topic. The reference list at the back of the book is fairly extensive, but it seems like it includes many references that are never actually mentioned in the text. While this presentation situates the current work within a certain context, it makes it less effective as a source for researchers since facts and references are more difficult to check and follow up. This seems to be more in line with how popular science books are written but seems like an unusual editorial decision for a book that also potentially would be useful to professionals. As if that was not enough, several of the few citations that do occur in the text are not present in the extensive reference list (e.g. ‘Carlsson 2010’, cited on p. 79; ‘Enquist 1922’ referred to on p. 89). The responsibility of this must fall on the editor. A more problematic aspect still is that there is an unattributed portion of the text on pages 78–79 that is a verbatim quote of no fewer than seven sentences, published as part of an abstract by Molin and Gummesson for the conference Mesolithic Burials, Rites, Symbols, and Social Organization of Early Postglacial Communities in 2013. The author includes a reference to the conference publication in the reference list, but the portion quoted in the text is not attributed. Even if unintentional, this is plagiarism.

To conclude, I see the value of this book for two categories of readers. The first obvious group is Swedish undergraduate students in archaeology. The text provides an accessible overview of the archaeological material in different regions, including new finds, and could function as a solid source to grasp the diversity of the Mesolithic in Sweden. This places the book in a category somewhat separate from an academic publication and more in the course book category. These books are very useful and a great service to the discipline, but given their place in the curriculum, they should also model the craft of scholarship with solid use of references, and cast a wide net to define the field. Here the book falls short. The other readership category that will find this book useful is archaeologists who want to gain an overview of Swedish Mesolithic sites in a language that is accessible to them. In the end, I believe this book, when read with adjusted expectations, provides a useful summary of the Swedish Mesolithic archaeological record. I further believe that it would have benefitted from a more engaged and critical editor.