This volume starts by pledging to reaffirm the centrality to historical archaeology of the “diabolical evil” (p. 26) of modernity: capitalism. It thus aims to counter a couple of recent tenets: that historical archaeology may deal with any society with historical records, and that modernity is not synonymous with capitalism. Within the discipline of archaeology, there has been a growing concern with materiality that transcends specific times and places. This is exemplified by such subjects as ancient and modern slavery, globalisation from the earliest times to the present day, and sexuality in both prehistoric and historic societies; these topics have brought together historical archaeologists with those working on earlier periods. Such studies clearly challenge the definition of historical archaeology as the study of capitalism with no relation to any other subject, time or space. Beyond the discipline of archaeology, there has also been a growing concern with the non-capitalist features of modernity. This has been a subject of interest for psychoanalysis, status sociology, cultural anthropology and hermeneutics, to name but a few disciplines, each stressing, from different viewpoints, that modern social life is much more than a direct and simple result of capitalist relations. All of these concerns have intensified since the end of the Cold War (1947–1989) as a result of the new role capitalism plays in the world, now encompassing China and almost all the former socialist countries. As Gavin Lucas and Ágústa Edwald observe: “Today, we arguably live in a world saturated by capitalist expansion—there is no more ‘outside’ or non-capitalist sphere” (p. 241). Others, however, would argue that this new capitalist world is no more unified or coherent than before but, on the contrary, is characterised by increased social, ethnic, national and other conflicts, both within and between countries. This situation has also led to further dissatisfaction with the conflation of modernity and capitalism.

This volume is therefore a clear challenge to all those defending a Marxist or Communist understanding in explicit opposition to ‘diabolical evils’, such as psychoanalysis (p. 26) and capitalism as a “magic system” (p. 39). Several chapters are thus concerned with describing how capitalism is the real explanation for modern materiality, beyond what is called misleading “guises” (p. 323) of false consciousness. Slavery is a case in point. Slavery as an institution is clearly beyond any capitalist definition, so much so that it pre-dates modernity by at least 4000 years. The argument is that modern slavery is to be considered as radically different from any earlier practices, for the modern version was a result of capitalism at the centre. It is argued that the material culture of enslavement, such as chains or slave quarters—even if apparently contrary to the capitalist ethos or ideology—only exists because of capitalism. As M.C. Reilly asserts: “Despite the tenuous relationship between enslaved labor and capitalist production” (p. 392), capitalism is still to be considered the key to slavery. This basic argument is repeated in many of the papers and it is indeed convincing up to a point: capitalism is a most potent organising principle and modern materiality is increasingly capitalist. The world's most populous country, China, proves that capitalism is master. In this way, it is beyond dispute that capitalism shapes modernity, but the two concepts could also exist independently; indeed, it is the study of the times and places where one exists without the other that may help to improve our understanding of the relationship between the two.

The volume presents a number of convincing case studies. Sayers uses the landscape of the Great Dismal Swamp (Virginia/North Carolina) to explore the capitalist enslavement mode of production and the transformational praxis developed by the swamp's inhabitants. Jocelyn Knauf links normalised domesticity and the rise of industrialised food in Annapolis, 1870–1930, to an evolving womanhood. Mark Leone and Elizabeth Pruitt use an analysis of food plants to conclude that, beneath modern cooking, Europeans and Africans eliminated seventeenth-century British cuisine and created Southern (US) cooking. Behind modern Protestant Christianity, they argue, is the world of the spirit, shaping a joint, non-racial heritage, not angry, but creative and equal. Adam Fracchia and Stephen Brighton explain the logic of accumulation, and the resulting commodification of people, and correlate it with residential differentiation, individualism and privatisation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Maryland. Laura Ng and Stacey Lynn Camp study the evidence for consumption in Second World War US incarceration camps and argue for visitors to these sites to question motivations for racialising and incarcerating people based on their ethnic background. Here, as in other chapters, Foucault's analysis is put into focus, particularly biopolitics. Case studies from Latin America draw on the work of Edward Said, taking a ‘bottom-up’ perspective; there is also iconographic analysis of the ‘visual economy’ of sugar plantations in Dominica, and a critique of the French mission civilisatrice in Africa. In addition, we also glimpse some authors reaching out to broader subjects or earlier periods, such as the study of feng shui (Molenda), the medieval period (Hambrecht) and Guinea from the Iron Age (González-Ruibal), all clearly non-capitalist periods and concepts, but still considered relevant. Other topics include post-colonial theory and identity processes.

In the end, the reader is probably still left questioning whether capitalism is indeed such an all-encompassing concept and reality, or whether a broader perspective on the archaeology of modernity—informed by the ancient and medieval past, to mention only a couple of well-trodden paths—would not provide a more complete picture of modernity. Whatever the answer, this volume invites the reader to a critical understanding of capitalism and is thus a most useful reading for all those interested in the historical archaeology of modernity.