It is all too easy to assume that similar meanings operate when artefacts of a similar style and complexity are found in several regions of the world. This archaeological resource could be separated by vast distances, represent different chronologies and signify diverse archaeologies. This broad-brush approach is all well and good if the archaeological assemblage is limited to a few examples, or it has a direct association with the anthropological or ethnographical record, what is termed an informed method (Chippindale and Taçon Reference Chippindale and Taçon1998). Fortunately the author stays clear of this approach and instead focuses specifically on formal methods and areas of research, namely Upper Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Mesoamerican portable assemblages (female figurines from Central America, eastern Mediterranean Europe, the Near East and Japan). Lesure has carefully and deliberately chosen these diverse archaeologies to show how enculturation and meaning through the medium of art is at one level universal (ie cultures that adopt the female form as an iconic signature) but, and fundamental to this volume, can also be broken down into a number of secondary levels of meaning. Lesure clearly shows that from region to region a number of diverse mechanisms are at play.

The book is divided into seven chapters, the first three focusing on the concept of what is portable art and the myth connected with the universality of meaning. In this case Lesure is concerned with female representations that equate to the traditional views of, say, the earlier Palaeolithic Venus figurines – the adornment of the female form and fertility, and the primordial Neolithic goddess; notions that were promoted by many well-established scholars of the twentieth century. In Chapter 2 Lesure takes on this traditional stance, focusing on the various comparisons and their contextual value within the archaeological record. Here the reader is diverted away from the predictable stylistic classifications – an empiricist approach of attempting to say something meaningful – to theoretical deconstruction, where the focus is on the mindset of the maker and user rather than the artefact itself. The groundwork covered in Chapters 1– 3 provides the reader with an essential baseline for the ensuing chapters, 4–7. It is within this section of the book that the author applies a useful discourse to the various case studies selected. As part of the process of deconstruction, Lesure identifies many similarities in style and complexity for both engravings and figurines, which, in a more conventional study, would have established a foreseeable universal structure. However, this volume clearly demonstrates that comparative styles may not necessarily represent universal meaning. Idiosyncratic changes to gesture, posture, stance and style as well as to the physicality of each figurine probably demonstrate changes to grammar in terms of both spatial and temporal development. This, above all, has far-reaching consequences for other forms of visual display such as decorated ceramics, metalwork and rock art.

This book is extremely readable, with fluent theoretical discussions on what prehistoric art might be. The text is supported by excellent line drawings, a reasonably full bibliography (although some key texts are omitted) and a useful index. At £60 and currently only available in hardback, this milestone volume will be out of reach of the pockets of most students; it will, though, be an invaluable tool on any good research library bookshelf.