The Cycladic culture of the third millennium BC exerted significant influence on the coastal communities of contemporary mainland Greece, Asia Minor and Crete. The profound interaction between this comparatively little-known civilisation and early Minoan practices and ideas indicates the great importance of the former for understanding the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures of the second millennium. Irrespective of that, the famous Cycladic figurines—many of which were looted and dispersed across the world's major museums during the last century—have captured the imagination not only of third-millennium Cretans and Greeks, but also of modern visitors, artists and thinkers.

Kavos and the special deposits is the second volume of the ongoing series entitled: ‘The Sanctuary on Keros and the Origins of Aegean Ritual Practice’, and it should therefore be understood within this wider context rather than as an independent monograph. The primary focus of this volume is dedicated to the first large concentration of Cycladic figurines to be discovered entirely undisturbed by subsequent looting, having been found in a secondary deposit that has kept their secret for more than 4500 years. The deposit, on the island of Keros, is called ‘Special Deposit South’ and has a parallel 110m to the north in the ‘Special Deposit North’, which, unfortunately, was illicitly plundered.

All those who have wondered what the Cycladic figurines represent will find some evidence in this volume either for or against their theories. But the volume offers much more than that. This is an exhaustive effort that illuminates the society, politics and rituals of the third-millennium Cyclades. A wide range of extremely detailed studies cast new light on arguments advanced by others or by the excavators themselves, either strengthening or weakening them. The hypotheses put forward culminate both in the disproval of previous theories and the emergence of a new working hypothesis for the site and its role, as well as for the wider significance of ritual in the third-millennium Cyclades.

The volume is a monument to thoroughness and transparency. There are chapters on every important type of find, including obsidian blades (Carter), spools (Haas-Lebegyev & C. Renfrew), stone discs (Boyd & Dixon), pottery (Sotirakopoulou, Tzavella, Hilditch), the imprints of leaves, matting and textiles (J. Renfrew), and statues, vessels and other artefacts of stone (Ugarkovic et al.). There is also a wide variety of analytical studies, including analysis of weathering (Maniatis & Tambakopoulos), spatial analysis (Boyd), soil and sediment analysis (French & Taylor) and a description of the areas around the site, including sustained comparisons with the Special Deposit North and the nearby settlement on the islet of Daskalio. The parallels with these two nearby sites, and especially the differences between them, are particularly illuminating. Two CD-ROMs provide high-resolution photographs of excavations and finds from both special deposits and the settlement at Daskalio.

The authors draw interesting conclusions, including: a) that the South and North Special Deposits are comparable yet have important differences; b) that there are no joins between the two assemblages; and c) that the larger items, especially the marble figurines and the pottery, are largely fragmented and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, are only partially represented in the assemblage, thus arguing for the secondary rather than primary nature of the South Deposit. They also show that the deposition was made in various phases, with pits dug into existing deposits on some occasions in order to make new ones, and that all materials, especially the stone and clay items, come from a range of areas, mostly from Naxos but also from other neighbouring islands. Moreover, applying the criteria of repetition, invariance, the air of tradition, rule governance and formalism (Bell Reference Bell1997; Kyriakidis Reference Kyriakidis2005), Renfrew recognises this deposit as the result of some type of ritual, taking place not at the site of Special Deposit South but somewhere else (Chapter 13). The authors discount the possibility that the material comes from a funerary deposit, due to the absence of certain types of finds from Special Deposit South such as human bones and teeth—yet another difference from the disturbed Special Deposit North. The similarity between the materials from cemetery and non-cemetery rituals is particularly interesting and reveals a common ‘ritual denominator’ of practices and instruments. It also reveals the relative institutionalisation of such a system (cf. Kyriakidis Reference Kyriakidis2005).

Gathering all this information together, Renfrew ingeniously proposes the possibility that Kavos was the epicentre of some type of alliance or amphictyony of neighbouring islands that felt the need to deposit here the remnants of the rituals taking place at their sanctuaries elsewhere. Being entirely clear that religion as such cannot really be traced through the material alone, but rather only the practice of ritual, Renfrew proposes a new way of looking at these small islands as a set of allied settlements under the leadership of Naxos (Chapters 22–23). This certainly is a plausible scenario, which, if true, could explain the military power of the Cycladic groups that managed to influence, colonise or dominate north and north-eastern Crete, the east coast of mainland Greece and parts of western Anatolia: all areas much more hospitable than the Cyclades and more likely to have been centres of greater populations. In the scenario proposed by Renfrew, rituals may have acted not only as the consequence of political and military integration between the islands, but also as the ‘glue’ that expedited further integration and the forging of a common ideology.

At least as important as the volume's fascinating and far-reaching conclusions for the archaeology, politics and rituals of the ancient Cyclades, however, are the highly detailed studies of the archaeological material, which will permit readers to test their own theories. It is through such exhaustive studies that progress is promoted. This is an essential volume for any archaeological library of import with an impressive host of authors who are to be commended for their high-quality work.