Guillaume Robin and Ron Adams have put together a fabulous book. For anyone interested in megalithic traditions, past or present, this is a treasure and certainly can be used for ideas and insights into the Neolithic and Bronze Age rock-cut tombs of Europe. It covers pretty much all the important aspects not only of rock-cut tombs in the Torajan highlands of Sulawesi, but other related burial practices as well like the house tombs, and the erong (elaborately carved wooden corporate-kin sarcophagi), the erection of stone menhirs, the creation of wooden statues of elites to watch over the tombs, and of lower-rank burial practices. In contrast to the elite burials in rock-cut tombs, lower-ranking individuals (and former slaves) were simply buried in the ground without much ceremony or ceremonial preparation. It is difficult to understand the logic behind just one type of burial practice without the full context of the range of burial practices and their transformations over time. Only elites of high rank were buried in rock-cut tombs or in specially carved wooden sarcophagi with elaborate rituals and feasting. Robin and Adams do a good job of making all this evident.

The volume covers an amazing and refreshing gamut of topics rarely dealt with by archaeologists or ethnoarchaeologists. The authors cover most subject areas that are related to the Torajan burial features including: the effects of the physical environment (mainly rock outcrops); relationships to villages; changes brought about by modern economies and other sociocultural changes over time; cultural variations within the Torajan area; previous ethnographic work; various ways of organising the tombs externally and internally; orientations of tombs; decorations; rituals; construction methods; quarries; construction failures; rituals and paraphernalia associated with the creation and use of the tombs; the remarkable feasts held for funerals; costs of materials and work crews; body preparations; corporate kinship groups and their ownership of the tombs; and benefits conferred from the elaborate burials, rituals and feasts. It is hard to think of an aspect that the authors have not addressed. I was especially impressed by the authors’ excellent treatment of the changes that took place over the past 1000 years including the recent effects of economic developments such as tourism. Too often the kinds of changes and the rates of changes in material culture are ignored by ethnographers, but this is critical for ethnoarchaeological research and it is well handled here, especially the shift from erong to rock-cut tombs c. 1680 CE.

The fieldwork encompassed visiting and recording hundreds of rock-cut tombs on Sulawesi, most still in use. The geographical coverage and photos are outstanding. This is a well-thought through and exemplary ethnoarchaeological work. I just had one minor quibble: on p.12, Torajan society is described as a “house society” where “individuals are not organized in descent groups or lineages but are members of houses”. This seems to imply that kinship is not important for the members of the tongkonan (the traditional house centre of large and powerful social groups where lineage elites lived) whereas the rest of the book makes it clear that kinship and descent (whether unilateral or bilateral) are central to understanding membership in tongkonans. Overall, the book shows and says that descent is critical for understanding most of the relationships in Torajan society, so this may be a fairly minor terminological point. I would have preferred that the authors call the societies in question ‘corporate group societies’ rather than ‘house’ societies. But all the descriptions and details are wonderful. And placing the rock-cut tombs in the context of the wider burial matrix, especially the erong and house tombs, and tracing these through time is a great piece of ethnoarchaeology.

The authors have recorded a great deal of valuable information about the traditional burial practices involving rock-cut tombs, and future generations will certainly be grateful to them. We can only hope that these authors, or those that follow them, will produce similar accounts of the megalithic menhirs and the tombs made in the form of dolmens. This is the way ethnoarchaeology should be done. Kudos to all involved.