This volume is a tribute to the late Professor David Peacock of the University of Southampton. His gentle and pleasant manner belied his eminence and truly pioneering contribution to ceramic and geological archaeological analysis and identification methods in use today. He developed the scientific approach that included petrographic methods for identifying the movement of pottery and locations of production sites, revealing many trade systems in the ancient world. Among many of his achievements in his numerous building material projects was that of identifying that most of the bricks in ancient Carthage came from Campania, in Italy. His seasons at the great Roman quarries of the Red Sea Mountains (in particular, Mons Claudianus) proved that the grey granodiorite from there was exclusively used in Rome.

The book contains a feast of fascinating and leading-edge research, from the world of archaeological ceramics, with many of the texts reflecting or standing upon Peacock’s pioneering work. The chapter ‘Context is Everything’ is a first, close examination of 18,000 bc pottery from Eastern Siberia and the early use of vessels to efficiently produce cooked food as well as the reasons behind selecting the locations of seasonal dwelling-places. Chapters encouraged by Peacock’s works on gabbroic clays from the Lizard Peninsula, in Cornwall, include ‘The Social Life of Clay’, which uses ethnological analogy, materiality and the life-world principle to extend petrology evidence to uncover social contexts, and ‘Revealing Complexity’, which reports on an on-going study of the percentages of the complexity of clays in vessels used in settlements throughout south-west Britain. ‘Phytolith Analysis of Ceramic Thin-Sections’ uses phytolithic evidence from the test-firing of clays with different vegetal tempering, revealing preferences for their selection, while the chapter ‘Taking the Rough with the Smooth’ recognises Peacock’s premise that proper grounding in macroscopic analysis is essential – this particular chapter uses SEM-EDS and QUEMSCAN technology to analyse the composition and characterisation of Bronze Age Aegean assemblages. A further chapter applying this technology – but to medieval and post-medieval pottery at Taunton Castle, Somerset – is ‘Analysis of Pottery Using QEMSCAN: Non-Destructive Analysis of Samian Ware’, which describes the use of portable XRF (pXRF) to study Samian from Scottish Roman military sites. The intriguing ‘Fired Fingers’ chapter is a study of finger imprints, which gives insights into communities of practice, motor habits and emic and etic learning processes. How variability features, outside standard form types, can shed light on individuals who made the vessels, is revealed by the chapter ‘Same but Different’. The concept that pottery decoration becomes meaningful through social engagement, depending on when, where and what the artefact is used for is explored in ‘A Picture Says a Thousand Words?’. The use of polynominal texture mapping to record the reflectivity and colour of lustre ware is explored in the chapter ‘Experiencing Lustre: Vessel Volumes and Visualisation’, which tests the potential of 3D methodologies in innovative computer applications for ceramicists. Inspired by Peacock, ‘Pots and Pies’ examines, with a ceramic and quantitative perspective, how food was cooked and what was eaten in the Byzantine Mediterranean. The final chapters include ‘The Resonance of Gabbroic Clay’, which focuses on contemporary use and experience of that clay in ceramic art, and ‘Hold Your Beliefs Lightly’, a summary of innovation and best practice in the study and analysis of Prehistoric, Roman and post Roman ceramics.

This is a valuable volume, which acknowledges David Peacock’s lifetime of innovative and important work and is divided into fifteen detailed chapters written by no less than thirty-one experts from the glitterati of the UK and overseas world of archaeological ceramics.