Glen Rice's book on mortuary practices of the Hohokam tradition in Arizona is not an easy read! It is filled with exhaustive compilations, statistics, correlations, novel insights, and complicated arguments. Fully comprehending the contents will entail frequent rereading of passages and pages. Yet it is well worth the effort to follow Rice as he constructs and applies an encompassing model of factors deemed essential for understanding Hohokam mortuary programs. The author addresses two major areas in which he contends Hohokam mortuary studies so far have fallen short: the adequate consideration of factors other than social organization and the examination of sufficiently regional-scale data sets. Another goal of the volume is to advocate for mortuary reporting standards that will produce consistent, more nuanced data in the future.

In keeping with a philosophy that mortuary spheres must be separately understood for each cultural tradition, Rice identifies 15 significant mortuary practices that are widespread across Hohokam occupations. To construct a model that meaningfully discriminates variability in those practices, he assigns determinate factors to four categories. The first category of sociopolitical ideology contains only the pervasive belief that society is rightfully egalitarian. Beliefs of a religious sort include ten tenets, such as that the soul of the deceased is dangerous to the living, and that pining for the dead keeps the soul from reaching the afterlife. Five factors in the social variables category include social position as it is based on age and social position as it is based on gender. Two ecological factors in the fourth category are the scarcity of wood after A.D. 1200 and seasonal variation in the position of the rising sun. These 18 factors, singly and in combination, illuminate how mortuary practices came to be expressed in the archaeological record.

The most innovative, and thought-provoking, aspects of Glen Rice's model are (1) the extent to which it is built on analogs derived from postcontact descendants and other Southwest groups and (2) the extent to which he effectively relates determinant factors to observed archaeological configurations. Rice offers explicit rationales for selecting each analog, relying most heavily for religious beliefs and social variables on the related Tohono O'Odhams and Akimel O'Odhams, who acknowledge direct Hohokam ancestry and inhabit adjoining sectors of past Hohokam territory. He draws more limited analogs from the Pee Posh (Maricopas), who are Yuman neighbors, additional Yuman tribes, the Hopis, and Puebloan peoples in general.

Rice and his coworkers assembled an unparalleled set of 1,733 burials from 13 reports on 11 substantially excavated villages in the Lower Salt River valley surrounding modern Phoenix. Largely produced by cultural resource management projects, the sample represents nearly equal Preclassic period (A.D. 500–1200) and Classic period (A.D. 1200–1450) cases. To implement the mortuary model, notably incomplete original variables had to be recorded again according to a new, standardized protocol. Rice introduces this detailed new protocol as baseline remedy, urging the archaeological community to refine and consensually adopt it as a means to generate future expansive and powerful data sets.

Professionals and students with interests in Hohokam or Southwest studies will unquestionably benefit from this book. It reflects the author's take on Hohokam archaeology developed during 35 years of experience and scholarship. Readers need not agree wholly or in part with every interpretive perspective, however, to broaden their knowledge and gain insights. Four chapters and two appendices focused on the body, mortuary accompaniments, mortuary architecture, and cemeteries enrich basic data and existing conclusions; a systematic summary of mortuary architecture is particularly thorough and valuable. One major contribution is strengthened correlations between single and combined mortuary variables. Another is the demonstration of remarkable continuity in some mortuary practices and disjunctive changes in the constituent variables of others. For example, long-sought patterns and timing in the ongoing balance between cremation and inhumation become clearer due to a regional scope.

Archaeologists of all sorts and audiences with broad interests in premodern cultural traditions can profitably learn from Glen Rice's innovative approach. It leads him to formalize and accord value to conceptual and behavioral connections with the dead among descendant peoples. It demonstrates how such analogs can suggest testable rules, motivations, and choices not readily apparent in the archaeological record. Rice's constructs further stand out as exemplary of how a comprehensive and internally coherent model can unite present and past elements to enhance understanding of the relationships between members of an archaeological society and their dead.