This weighty volume (more than 500 printed pages, plus 400 supplementary pages online) reports on Anglo-French fieldwork undertaken in 1999–2006 on the low hill-cum-tell of Kouphovouno near Sparta. Following surface collection, geophysical survey and subsurface coring, excavation exposed remains of a Roman building, Middle Helladic burial groups, Early Helladic pits of enigmatic function and Late (LN) and Middle (MN) Neolithic habitation deposits. The contents and stratigraphic relationships of the excavated contexts are documented in exemplary detail. Only the MN yielded intelligible building plans: rectangular, free-standing above-ground structures, including two complete with a floor area of 3.5m² and 4–5m² and a third incomplete of at least 7m². These are tiny compared with above-ground structures (and more similar in size to ‘pit houses’) in northern Greece, but plans and contents are too sparse to determine whether multiple such structures comprised a single household, as suggested here.

Stratigraphic matrices, ¹⁴C determinations on short-lived charred seeds/fruits and seriation of pottery types together provide a relative and absolute chronology for MN and LN levels consistent with data from other Peloponnesian sites, especially Franchthi Cave. Ceramic chronology is based on decorative styles or ‘wares’, but technological differences between MN and LN are also noted. Despite pan-Peloponnesian similarities, Kouphovouno ceramics display idiosyncrasies consistent with local production, as do ceramic wasters, a possible firing area and petrographic analysis of fabric recipes. Interestingly, Kouphovouno exhibits closer stylistic similarities with Franchthi and Lerna in the Argolid than with geographically intermediate sites in upland Arcadia.

LN levels, including both residual earlier and intrusive later pottery, are more mixed than MN, underlining the importance of direct ¹⁴C dates for charred archaeobotanical remains. Final Neolithic (FN) pottery was found only in mixed deposits – unfortunate, given the many sites attributed to this period by the Laconia Survey and the occurrence in earlier levels at Kouphovouno of types (e.g. strainers) perhaps more typical elsewhere of FN. Both MN and LN levels produced assemblages of ornaments and of chipped-stone, macrolithic and bone tools – all copiously illustrated and catalogued – and also highly informative archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological material.

The archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological studies combined macroscopic and stable-isotope analyses. As usual for the Neolithic in Greece, charred crop remains are dominated by cereals (the prominence of free-threshing wheat highlighting an emerging distinction between south and north) and pulses, while figs were also dried for storage. Stable-isotope values for crop seeds and ecological preferences of weeds identify stable ‘garden’ cultivation with intensive manuring (especially of free-threshing wheat) and perhaps watering (of peas). As at Knossos, LN cultivation may be less intensive than MN, at Kouphovouno counterintuitively so given apparent contraction of the settlement. Faunal remains are, as usual, heavily dominated by domesticates, with sheep more frequent (especially in MN) than pigs, goats and cattle. The identification of wild goat (Capra ibex) is of sufficient biogeographical interest to warrant further discussion and perhaps consideration of feral domesticates as an alternative. Cattle were butchered more intensively than smaller domesticates, while heavier MN than LN breakage – consistent with greater exploitation of within-bone nutrients – is again observed at other earlier Neolithic sites in Greece. Mortality data are interpreted in terms of a shift from older deaths and use of secondary products in MN to younger deaths prioritizing meat consumption in LN, but the latter sample is small and the methods underpinning the profiles presented are not detailed here. Incremental stable-isotope values for sheep and goat teeth suggest most of these animals foraged, or were fed, locally throughout the year, consistent with herding on a modest scale.

Publication of any multidisciplinary excavation project is a huge task and William Cavanagh and Josette Renard must be congratulated on bringing this volume to completion, despite the tragically premature loss of Chris Mee, their co-director responsible for the most abundant and arguably most critical category of material – the pottery. For obvious practical reasons, the online supplementary material is almost as substantial as the printed volume. Lengthy catalogues and tables of primary data, which will only be consulted by researchers engaged in detailed reanalysis, are rightly supplementary; descriptions of individual excavation contexts in Chapter 2 could perhaps likewise be placed online. Gratifyingly, the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological studies occupy a printed chapter, as does physical anthropological analysis of human burials. Frustratingly, however, key arguments in the printed chapters on dating (Chapter 3), ceramics (Chapter 4), macrolithics (Chapter 6) and archaeobotanical/zooarchaeological material (Chapter 9), are difficult to follow without consulting the charts and some summary tables that are described in the text but placed in the supplementary material. Whatever the division between printed volume and supplement (opinions on what is optimal will doubtless differ), this publication is an important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the Neolithic in Greece and especially so of the poorly documented Peloponnesian MN.