This volume succeeds in both its aims — to provide a thorough synthesis of animal bone data from the Roman frontier region of the Dutch River Area and to use that synthesis in a well-informed discussion of economic development during the Roman occupation. It is the culmination of two post-doctoral research projects undertaken by Groot and forms an important comparison to the Roman Rural Settlement Project covering England and Wales, particularly the forthcoming (2017) volume on rural economy (Smith, Allen, Brindle and Fulford). The study area bears many similarities to northern Britain in its archaeology (mainly dispersed rural settlements plus military installations) and its geography (temperate north-west Europe). The preservation of animal bones in rural parts of the Dutch River military zone is rather better than in northern Britain, so G.’s study is able to cover all types of settlement, including rural farmsteads and villas, temples, military sites and extramural settlements, and one major town. This allows her to compare good sample sizes from agriculturally productive sites and ‘consumer’ sites whose inhabitants produced few or no livestock. She has 45 assemblages of animal bones from rural sites (farmsteads and villas are not differentiated) and 27 from the ‘consumer’ sites. A clear location map would have been useful, to link the vague outline of fig. 1.1 to the dense soil map in fig. 2.1.

Ch. 1 sets the scene with the landscape and political history of the region and draws on Zeder's (Feeding Cities: Specialized Animal Economy in the Ancient Near East (1991)) distinction between direct and indirect modes of distribution. The sites and methods are clearly introduced while the material is studied in three main time periods: Early, Middle and Late Roman.

The data-rich chapters follow the standard themes of animal bone reports, covering variables such as frequencies of species and parts of the body, sizes and shapes of livestock's bones, their ages at death and systems of butchery. For non-specialists, there are useful overviews of how these attributes are relevant to economic questions. There are brief considerations of taphonomic factors that may have biased the assemblages. Ch. 5 covers the data for the rural sites (with a useful introduction covering the later Iron Age, when changes were already occurring in some variables). Ch. 6 follows the same pattern for the ‘consumer’ sites. The data synthesised here, together with many supplementary figures and tables freely available online (http://dx.doi.org/10.17026/dans-zth-dgam), will provide highly useful resources for animal bone specialists working in other regions of the Roman Empire, whether or not they are frontier regions.

But the most widely useful parts of G.’s work are her discussion chapters, which are of relevance to anyone interested in the economic interactions of producers and consumers in general and the impact of the Roman Empire in particular. Her evaluations of the animal bone data are enhanced by the complementary research by colleagues on the geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical evidence relating to landuse and potential pastoral and arable production. Together, these data indicate that the local farmers did respond to the Roman invasion and occupation of the region by increasing production where this was feasible, and that the mid-second century was a period of particularly noticeable change. While rural sites were based on mixed arable and livestock production throughout the region in all periods, individual farms developed in a variety of ways. G. concludes that the army brought in some livestock resources in the early years of campaigning and occupation, but that local farmers soon engaged directly with military and urban markets, sometimes specialising in particular products such as horses, wool or large cattle for traction or meat.

The book is firmly focused on evidence relevant to economic considerations relating to production and supply of livestock, with an emphasis on livestock as food. G. brings in some comparisons with other frontier regions and suggests various factors that might have affected the study area, including changes in ethnicity in the later Roman period, when the local rural farms no longer seem to have been supplying meat to the major town. Much of the interpretation has to remain speculative, but the volume provides an excellent starting point for further studies in the region and for comparisons with others. The volume is very well produced and illustrated but, at €99, is over-priced for most individual purchasers.