This volume offers a series of 12 chapters all (re)addressing a theme that has not been the direct topic of debate for a while, but which has been one of the most fundamental to the history of archaeological thinking: identity. In reality, it is not so much a return; as pointed out in the introduction, identity actually never left archaeological discourse—its use has even increased in archaeological research over the past 10 years. Why this needed to be made explicit by the editors as a justification for a volume on identity is not hard to tell: through extensive debates in social sciences, archaeology and the humanities, identity has been deconstructed to near impossibility. In particular, the combination of identity and material culture as representing ‘people’ has been severely criticized: objects do not a priori signify or symbolize either gender, ethnic, religious or cultural identity. Furthermore, through the recent material turn, archaeology's attention seems to have shifted to material or non-human agency and therefore is intentionally less concerned with anthropocentric perspectives that identity offered. Having finally broken free from it, why bring such an impossible subject, that has troubled archaeology for so long, back on the table?

The editors make clear that it is not only useful, but necessary, to re-approach identity within the paradigm shift the material turn has instigated, as a new dynamic with which to study the connection between people and material culture. The premise for the book is founded upon the ‘realisation that identity is an emergent property of living in a material world’ (p. 4). The introduction is solid in its intentions and presents a clear historical overview of the use of identity in archaeology. Although on the one hand a historiographical survey is welcomed to define the volume's current methodological position, describing the process of identity-studies in archaeology as a succession of ‘waves’ (pp. 7–9) creates a form of linearity which comes across somewhat counterfactual to the relational and dynamic approach that the editors envision. In addition, it also seems slightly detrimental to define the contemporary situation as a ‘third wave’ that should principally present itself, if anything, as non-hierarchical. If we really want to rethink identity and objects from the new awareness of emergent properties and materiality, then these views ideally should also be applied to former processual and post-processual attempts at identity (furthermore, it appears that not all papers in the volume fall under this alleged ‘third wave’, as described in the introduction). These points notwithstanding, all the different and innovative reflections on change and continuity, complexity and relationality, make this publication a useful read, giving the volume both a taste of new approaches in contemporary archaeological method and theory while at the same time critically acknowledging the analytical value of the concept of identity. Moreover, despite the different and sometimes even contradictory approaches present in the volume, all the contributions are concise, data-driven, and work from solid archaeological case studies. As the study of identity brought a self-awareness, the editors not only ask themselves how this volume reflects on the current state of archaeological thinking, but it also made them include a critical and comprehensive reflection by Bernard Knapp on the papers and the main issues that arose from the book (chapter 12).

As one reads through the chapters, organized loosely by subject (graves, practices and rituals, material culture and concepts of otherness and belonging) instead of a geographical or chronological arrangement, a few issues are important to highlight in order to discuss the different chapters and simultaneously build a wider understanding of the theoretical positions on identity.

First of all, it is to some extent a pity, in reference to the complexity and nuance that identity studies have brought about in the last decades, that many of the authors still often limit themselves to cultural identity, instead of incorporating identity's many different faces. What is perhaps next most striking, on a methodological level, is that the most explicit theoretical models employed (most explicitly by Harris, chapter 2, and Wright, chapter 9) are derived from Deleuze and Guattari, while materiality plays a more moderate role and Latour seems to have vanished from the stage. Harris (chapter 2), for example, applies Deleuze and Guattari's ‘assemblage theory’ to the so-called Amesbury Archer, a rich British Beaker burial from 2400 bc. He wants to think of identity ‘as an on-going assemblage rather than a static representational identity’ (p. 29). Another major returning theoretical concept throughout the papers is the concept of ‘hybridity’ to define material culture, cultural contact, and identity (5 of the 11 papers use it), which is perhaps slightly surprising, considering the substantial criticism it has met in the past decade. The philosophy of Deleuze stands in contrast with a term like hybrid, and in this respect an interesting methodological dichotomy can be observed between the papers whose main goal it is to refrain from material culture as representational, but instead review it in a constant state of change in a relational and temporal continuum, and those who still take identities as fixed entities and material culture as emblematic for their identification (Halstad McGuire, chapter 4, Campbell, chapter 11, and to a lesser extent, Marín-Aguilera, chapter 10). Halstad McGuire discusses how migrant identities are represented in Viking burials in Scotland. When it comes to how to approach identity in the archaeological record, these scholars seem to take quite radically opposing views: where Harris and Maldonado warn against the uncritical view of grave goods as representing wealth or signal symbols of power, Halstad McGuire seems to do just that in her analysis ascribing masculine ideals and warrior status to weapons found in grave contexts (p. 75). Marín-Aguilera focuses on the impact of different material culture and habits on the identity of Phoenician colonies in Iberia, stating that ninth–sixth-century bc Grey Ware was intentionally made in a hybrid form to allude to cultural identities both of the colonized and the colonizer (p. 204). Campbell discusses the interaction between indigenous people and Roman oppressors and the negotiation of identity through objects, and the impact of those in Roman Britain, using concepts such as hybridization and creolization.

The antireductionist, decentralizing and relational ontology of Deleuze and Guattari has some clear advantages for archaeology, being able to take into account exactly those levels of complexity that could make a concept of identity feasible again as an object of study. On the other hand, one might also consider the term identity somewhat restricting in this respect and perhaps even incompatible as an anthropocentric concept within an ontology that is posthuman. As a defence, the claim made in the volume is that when people and things are seen as events, it is the chain of events which makes it possible to identify aspects of the identity of a person as extracted from material culture. Another issue, perhaps, for archaeological uses of Deleuze in relation to identity might be the flat ontology of emergent properties itself, running the risk of being too simplistically employed as a form of materialism. However more effectively rhizomes, singularities and assemblages might describe the real world, the world is not experienced by humans through rhizomes and assemblages, but through categories, traditions and fixed entities. In terms of cultural identity, Bergson, Deleuze (and Latour) can be credited with the crucial realization of the changing and contingent nature of (for example) groups, and in this case ‘Being Phoenician’ through repetitive cultural actualizations is always Becoming Something Different. This realization, however, should not exclude ‘Being Phoenician’ from occasionally and contextually existing as a social reality.

To the degree that they argue beyond the representation/materialism dichotomy, I was very impressed with the chapters on ritual performance and identity by Creese and Hayne. Creese's work really stands out, not only for explicitly making clear that representational and relational approaches need not be opposed, but especially by showing how, in a sophisticated discussion via the practice of effigy pipe-smoking and these pipes’ decorative patterns, individuals’ personal identities are emergent and represented through processes of emotional, substantial and bodily engagement with the pipes (p. 90). Practice and performance as a focus, moreover, remains a key concept in studying relational approaches to identity in a meaningful way, as these acknowledge the mutability of identity experience and take a dynamic approach to material culture through engagement with the surrounding world. This is also shown convincingly by Hayne (chapter 6) in his study of ritual alcohol consumption among the nuraghi in Iron Age Sardinia and the incorporation of foreign Phoenician material. The paper of Adrián Maldonado also achieves this goal, albeit through a different route (chapter 3). He studied the stone Long cist in Early Medieval Scotland from a materiality perspective. While these objects used to represent a conversion to Christianity, Maldonado argues instead that burial practices do not simply represent the effect of such causes and that one should in this case rather look to notions of personhood, material, the body and its materiality.

To conclude, I briefly return to the introduction, in which the editors challenge themselves with the question of what their particular approach to identity reveals about the current theoretical climate (p. 10). Overall, a particular approach seems to be absent. While the material turn for one scholar means a complete posthuman ontological rethinking, materiality remains a symbol of a collective identity for the other. This diversity is a good thing, as it accentuates that, when taking things seriously, they may dictate a plurality of approaches. It reveals that material culture can produce all these different qualities and that, in acknowledging this, we should continue to be heterogeneous in approach, as long as we contextualize and take complexity and experience seriously. Whatever the way in which people are constituted by the material world, however they represent, do not represent, or think to represent themselves through material culture, it is obvious that the topic of identity not only remains worthwhile to revisit in order to discuss the relation between people and objects; by illuminating these processes, it is also possible to lay bare the nature of archaeological discourse itself. Understanding singularities, among other things, is that we never know what an assemblage of things can and will do; and therefore realizing that things will always surprise us. Through attempts like this volume, archaeology as a discipline remains well equipped to stay surprised.