Anke Hein's study of prehistoric burials in the Liangshan region of southwest China offers archaeologists an innovative analytical approach to studying the mortuary record. Hein skillfully emphasizes how human behaviors and actions at multiple points in time and space produce burial assemblages that can be characterized as composite objects. Hein then employs these composite objects to trace shared burial traditions across the landscape and to delineate the identities of the varied groups occupying this complex region. This approach is productive in mortuary analysis because it forces archaeologists to be attentive to the multifaceted nature of burial rituals, and it reminds us to consider the complicated connections between burial assemblages and human behavior at varied scales.

Hein takes an exploratory and multivariate statistical approach to the burial record of the Liangshan region to increase understanding of this area's past social organization and regional dynamics before the Han dynasty encroachment in the early first millennium AD. Liangshan is an area that largely exists on the margins of archaeological research in China. Hein argues that Liangshan is marginalized because of preservation issues, disproportionately low levels of research in the region compared to others, and, perhaps most significantly, the heterogeneity of the Liangshan material record. This complexity has hindered archaeological research in the area as culture-historical models commonly used in China to identify regional archaeological cultures are ineffective. To address the heterogenous nature of the Liangshan material record, the author integrates the concepts of life histories (derived from chaîne opératoire approaches in archaeology) and communities of practice into the core of the project's research design. Hein argues that this approach enables a multiscalar analysis wherein burial structures, interred goods, the body, and related features and artifacts can be analyzed separately before reassembling the components to analyze intra- and intersite relationships through time.

The book is organized into three parts. The first part includes chapters 2 and 3. In chapter 2, the author offers an overview of the research design's core theoretical and methodological issues. Most of the chapter is dedicated to breaking apart each component of the model, which the author terms a “mortuary chaîne opératoire.” Chapter 3 introduces the geography, climate, and soil morphology of the Liangshan region. Hein also discusses the research environment of the region, the limits of the available data, and how she employs a “reliability index” to approach the complex datasets from Liangshan burials, which includes data covering 1,059 burials from 213 sites.

The second part consists of four chapters that form the core of Hein's research. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 provide the results of Hein's extensive quantitative analyses of the separate components of the burial record: grave construction and related features (chapter 4), the body and interment practices (chapter 5), and interred goods (chapter 6). In chapter 7, Hein brings together the separate components by connecting the various burial practices and social dynamics identified in the previous chapters through time and across space. In addition, Hein proposes a chronology for the Liangshan region.

The final section is composed of two chapters. In chapter 8, the author builds on the analysis in chapter 7 and provides a broader discussion of group differentiation, geography, and chronology in the Liangshan region. Chapter 9 furthers the discussion of group differentiation and examines the implications of Hein's model in the study of the material record, particularly the burial record. The author concludes in these chapters that geographic limitations caused by the Liangshan region's numerous mountains and river valleys held a substantial role in shaping burial rituals and contributed to the differences among Liangshan groups. However, Hein acknowledges that the natural landscape is just one of many factors shaping the boundaries between regional groups, as these groups also changed along with shifts in the complex networks that crossed the region. Moreover, it is not uncommon in the region for cultural concerns to overcome natural limitations. For example, in Liangshan's Anning River Valley, some large stones used in the construction of megalithic graves were transported over long distances, despite the complex geography of the region. Hein argues stones procured nonlocally were obtained from places that held special meanings for those constructing the graves.

Given the complexity of the regional data and the fact that the author's approach relies heavily on context, a full appreciation of the pre-Han societal dynamics in the Liangshan region requires a dynamic perspective on several levels of archaeological data. However, the discussion of settlements and other nonburial sites is somewhat limited, which at points limits the effectiveness of her conclusions about regional dynamics. Despite this, it is clear the author has done intensive research on settlements that could be more comprehensively integrated into the kinds of contextual arguments developed in this book. Overall, Hein's rigorous application of her model is both commendable and worthy of further exploration in mortuary archaeology.