The objective of this fine volume, the second in a planned series of four by the Trans-Sahara Project, is to present research and fieldwork on burials, migrations and issues of identity in the ancient Sahara by a varied group of archaeologists and scientists. It is divided into six parts comprising 17 chapters, under the sub-topics of: I) ‘Burial Practices in the Central Sahara’; II) ‘Looking East’; III) ‘Looking North’; IV) ‘Looking West’; V) ‘Looking South’; and VI) ‘Linguistic Aspects of Migration and Identity’. The editors conclude that “there is irrefutable evidence of links and connections that served to define a Trans-Saharan zone at an early date”, and that “migration and mobility created networks of connectivity and elements of a shared culture or ‘koine’” (p. 525).

Fundamentally, the volume is taken up with defining terminologies, establishing typologies of burials and grave goods and the presentation of new baseline scientific, linguistic and archaeological evidence for the purpose of recovering human movement and settlement. By extension, this evidence also contributes to the understanding of cultural and identity formation across the ancient Sahara and along its frontiers. As virtually all the chapters demonstrate repeatedly, the challenging data yielded by this harsh environment make arriving at robust conclusions extremely difficult. Thus, we are informed from careful morphometric and isotopic studies, and by an object worn by a “young woman of Sub-Saharan physiognomy”, that “Garamantian society included individuals of diverse geographic origin” suggestive of “a vivid trading community that maintained a resident population through centuries, and one which was enriched by multiple-sourced Trans-Saharan migrations” (p. 155). It is also revealed that osteological evidence from an excavated necropolis at Fewet (modern Ghat) in the south-western Libyan Fezzan shows “a certain biological continuity between populations from the Late Pastoral to Garamantian times” (p. 183). Similar patterns of migration and intermixing of populations in the Nile Valley are revealed by isotopic studies of skeletal remains at the Upper Nubian site of Tombos, which confirm the historical conquest and occupation of the area by Egyptian rulers of the New Kingdom (Chapter 7).

The evidence in this volume for widespread contact and communications across the ancient Sahara consistent with a ‘koine’ is necessarily uneven. There is presently no indication, for example, of an ancient “Saharan wave of immigration” in the eastern Niger River region (p. 395) or interaction between the Garamantians and the communities of the southern Lake Chad Basin and Central Saharan communities. The picture in the west is more promising where clear cultural links stretching from the Protohistoric to Late Antique periods between the Western and Central Sahara are evidently based on burial practices and architecture (Chapters 10–11). Much of this has to do with the favourable east–west geographic orientation of the mountain valleys in this region. A similar cultural and material coherence in Numidian (and I would add Gaetulian) burial practices with those farther to the Saharan south is likewise evident (Chapter 8). First-millennium BC cemeteries in north-east Morocco, on the other hand, show no unequivocal evidence for trade and contact with the Sahara.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for a ‘koine’ is to be found in the still much-debated linguistic history of the spread of the Berber languages across north-western Africa in Antiquity (Chapters 13–16). Whether their introduction to the Sahara belongs to a first wave of pastoralism in that region (6000 BC), followed by broad dissemination by the second millennium BC, or is a phenomenon of the first millennium BC associated with the spread of oasis settlements, the debate reminds us that the history of the ancient Sahara is still in its early stages.

The concluding discussion by the volume's editors (Chapter 17) offers an insightful synthesis and analysis of the preceding chapters. At various points they allude to the evidence of increased complexity, wealth, hierarchies and state formation that reflected contacts with northern Africa and Phoenician and Roman civilisations. While it is now clear that the Saharan communities carved out a distinctive and diverse cultural world during Antiquity, the work in this volume also reminds us that the Sahara was not a closed world, but one whose evolution and development was deeply intertwined with what was going on along the shores of the Mediterranean, the watery desert to the north.

One of the most interesting questions raised in this monograph is in Chapter 6, when discussing the mass of archaeological data accumulated in the Middle Nile, the author ponders whether the “archaeological practices of data collection sometimes appear to have outstripped our capacity for analysis” and why “the need for additional data so often remains our perennial response to our many frustrations” (pp. 213–14). Despite the difficulties of the remarkable data presented in this volume, there is a lot of it, and a good deal of it evades easy interpretation regarding its meaning and implications. Going forward, might it be efficacious to ask whether the questions that have driven research to date on the ancient Sahara are worthy of some rethinking? Although even the most basic matters relating to the arrival, settlement, culture and death of people in this vast arid landscape remain unresolved, I pose this question because, as this important volume reveals, we are beginning to get glimpses of the diversity and particularity of cultures that are embedded within the larger Saharan ‘koine’.