The volume under review reads as an accomplished hybrid between popular historical writing and scholarly research. It can be enjoyed at different levels, both by the curious history buff and by the academic studying frontiers and borders in the past. The book develops from the premise that western knowledge of history is centred on cultures such as those of the Egyptians, Athenians and Romans, which strongly believed in their own superiority. These cultures cast everyone at the periphery of their territories as barbarians to be exploited, saved or abhorred. However, ‘there is a fundamental problem when considering the edges of the world: the edges are determined by where we think the centre is’ (p. 9). In this book R. seeks to overcome the limitations of examining frontier cultures from the dominant perspective. Instead, he analyses data (archaeological, ethnographic and literary) concerning peripheral civilisations from a point of view that, if not fully ‘border-centric’, is at least aware of its own bias.

The book is divided into four sections, following a journey that is in the first instance chronological, but also geographical. R. moves from the prehistory of Africa, the Levant, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Basin (Section 1), onto the Greek world (Section 2) and the Roman empire (Section 3), and then to civilisations beyond the Mediterranean (Section 4), closing the circle by returning to Africa.

R.’s ability to summarise archaeological discoveries, using them as evidence in the narrative, shines the brightest the further he moves from classical civilisations, both in time and space. Section 1, for example, offers an interesting summary of archaeological excavations around lake Turkana in Kenya, such as the massacre of Nataruck, where 27 hunter-gatherer people, including eight women and six children, were uncovered showing signs of violent death (p. 23). The presence of women and children, normally absorbed by the winning tribe after a conflict, is used by R. to talk about the nature of human conflict in hunter-gatherer and later pastoralist society. The cemetery of Lothagam North, covering 1,400 square metres in egalitarian burials from pastoralist societies, is used to smash ‘the assumption that a society which builds large monuments would be urbanised, or at least non-nomadic, and that the building of the monument was often a show of power and wealth from a hierarchical society’ (p. 29).

As the volume contrasts classical civilisations with those developing at their edges, it must confront the former, their historiography and, in the case of Egypt and Rome (Sections 1 and 3), their epigraphy. This is where readers might experience the most contrast between the two souls of this book. I found the use of archaeological evidence (some of which is little known beyond specific academic circles – e.g. the fortress at Semna and its Nubian cooking vessels on the Egyptian-Nubian frontier) clashed with the contextualising material (such as the dynastic intricacies of Egyptian and Nubian pharaohs). The alternance of the two made the text, if not hard to read, complex beyond the full comprehension and enjoyment of a non-scholarly audience.

I reviewed this book from my own biased perspective of an archaeologist of the frontiers of the Roman Empire, specialising in Hadrian’s Wall and the everyday life of individuals and communities along it. Section 3 focuses on two peripheries of Rome: Hadrian’s Wall and north Africa, in the form of Morocco and Graeco-Roman Egypt. The Hadrian’s Wall section reads, to a scholar of the subject, as a comprehensive introduction for the uninitiated. It mentions in passing key issues such as the presence of women and children in Roman forts (p. 178), but more could have been made of the work by scholars such as E.M. Greene on the Vindolanda shoe collection (‘Sulpicia Lepidina and Elizabeth Custer: a Cross-cultural Analogy for the Social Roles of Women on a Military Frontier’, in: M. Duggan, F. McIntosh and D. Rohl [edd.], Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference 2011 [2012], pp. 105–14; ‘Female Networks in the Military Communities of the Roman West: a view from the Vindolanda Tablets’, in: E. Hemelrijk and G. Woolf [edd.], Women and the Roman City in the Latin West [2013], pp. 369–90), P.M. Allison (People and Spaces in Roman Military Bases [2013]) and S. Hoss and A. Whitmore (edd., Small Finds and Ancient Social Practices in the North-West Provinces of the Roman Empire [2016]). These are only a few of the authors who have contributed to the lively debate on using material culture to gain insights into the daily life of individuals and communities at Roman forts and beyond. Knowledge of the work of A. Gardner about Hadrian’s Wall as a border (‘Hadrian’s Wall and Border Studies: Problems and Prospects’, Britannia 53 [2022], 159–71), and how living on the frontier might affect one’s identity and the way it is expressed, would also have enriched this chapter.

The book closes with Section 4, ‘Beyond the Classical World’, which transports readers to the Ukraine, Pakistan, Vietnam and back to Africa. In these chapters R.’s ability in bringing to the fore tales of individuals shines again. The episode of the Trung sisters who, hailing from the Vietnamese Lac Viet region, rebelled against Chinese Han dynasty administrators (p. 281) is passingly (and favourably) compared with the more widely known Boudiccan revolt in Roman Britain, which happened only twenty years later. This short passage demonstrates how a classically centred view of history can flatten time and space. The average western reader might be surprised to encounter such a complex tale of rebellion happening before, and geographically unrelated to, the Roman Empire.

Overall, the volume is an interesting, well-researched read. My own knowledge of Roman Britain and the frontiers of the Roman Empire, applied to the relevant chapters in the text, led me to question whether a scholar of African prehistory or the influence of classical civilisation in Asia would also find ‘their’ chapter more introductive than expansive. As a scholar, I would have enjoyed a bibliography by chapter. As a layperson, I would have enjoyed the coloured plates referenced in-text and richer black-and-white imaging to illustrate personal stories. This would have greatly complemented the maps at the beginning of each chapter, enhanced accessibility and would have broken up the text whenever it became too dense. As a combination of scholar and layperson, I found this to be a good reminder to exit my comfort zone – an invitation to research beyond the influence that Rome, Greece and Egypt had on the frontiers, into the frontiers’ own culture, interactions and even resistance to the classical world.