This volume appears a decade after the publication of its predecessor, Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia, edited by Marc Oxenham and Nancy Tayles (Reference Oxenham and Tayles2006), and is appropriately dedicated to the immense contribution made by Tayles not only in her own continuing research, but also by the veritable army of her former graduate students. The growth of the discipline over the past 10 years is reflected in its breadth of coverage and new insights. There are two geographic divisions. The first encompasses Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, with 11 papers on the former, and 4 on the latter; the second comprises 13 papers on the Pacific Islands. In an introductory chapter, the editors present an essential and succinct summary of the population history of Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, beginning with Homo erectus 1.6 million years ago, then covering the several expansions of anatomically modern humans from their African homeland. The editors suggest two routes: a northern one from the Levant into Northeast Asia and a southern pathway into Southeast Asia. They then summarise the available evidence for the southward diffusion of farming communities and their interaction with the indigenous hunter-gatherers. This is seen at its clearest at the site of Man Bac in northern Vietnam, where there is not only DNA evidence for an intrusive group, but also distinct cranial morphological differences that divide the cemetery population into two groups.

There follow 27 chapters from 55 authors. Ten cover the Southeast Asian mainland, and four, the islands. The remainder are devoted to the Pacific. Freedom to excavate human remains in Southeast Asia has made it possible to study large, well-dated skeletal samples incorporating temporal change. Thus, at Ban Non Wat in north-east Thailand, about 700 burials cover 11 phases from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. The wealth of social and biological information that can be obtained is seen in the analysis of burial 676, a frail young woman. Her diet, health, origin and mortuary ritual are combined to locate her within the Bronze Age community. The next step is to match this for the other 699 burials, and to illuminate changing patterns over 100 or so generations.

As with the frail woman from Ban Non Wat, burial 9 at Man Bac exhibits a degree of social care, given the young man's quadriplegia. While these two papers concentrate on the individual, others take a broader approach. One explores health and disease in infants and children at seven Thai sites covering the Neolithic to the Iron Age, noting the impact of increased population density and the construction of moats/reservoirs around settlements during the later part of the sequence. This contrasts with the other end of the life cycle, where Ken Ross and Marc Oxenham examine the evidence for the treatment of the elderly at Non Nok Tha. They identify rituals that differed from the norm, among them relocating the deceased's head to lie on the chest or waist. One of the questions often asked about prehistoric people is how long they lived. This is addressed by Nancy Tayles and Siân Halcrow, who prefer general life stages, such as young or old adult, rather than estimates in years.

Archaeothanatology is concerned with how an individual was interred. Successful application of this approach, one with serious implications for assessing social identities, places a premium on the precise field recording of bone positions, and is best undertaken when a bioarchaeologist is present. The authors of the chapter on ‘Field anthropology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific’ evaluate this potential with particular reference to a Neolithic cemetery at Pain Haka on the island of Flores.

The veritable feast of new information could well have justified ending the book at this point, but there is much more to come. The second section involves the myriad islands and environmental diversity of the Pacific. Human settlement was heavily influenced by the low sea levels during the last glacial maximum, which either joined what are now islands, or markedly reduced the distance between them. The editors set the stage, providing an overview of the settlement chronology and the environments encountered, and relating the distribution of the malarial mosquito to where and how people lived.

The rare survival of ancient DNA is one of the most frustrating aspects of working in both Southeast Asia and the greater Pacific. Lisa Matisoo-Smith confronts this issue in considering the origins and spread of the Lapita people. The latter are defined archaeologically on the basis of a distinctive decoration on pottery vessels and associated material culture, but modern DNA suggests a far more complex history of expansive human settlement than a simple wave of advance. One wonders the extent to which this might also have been the case on the mainland with the spread of early agriculturalists. Compared with the Southeast Asian mainland, Lapita cemetery sites are also small and few and far between. Teouma on Efate Island, Vanuatu, is the most significant, with about 100 individuals. Along with smaller samples, Rebecca Kinaston et al. explore the evidence for diet from the carbon stable isotope evidence. The initial Lapita settlers of Teouma were broad-ranging in their fishing and collecting, in addition to their use of domestic pigs, chickens and rats. Further insight into diet and health is provided by studies of the dog, the chicken and the dental calculus in which plant microfossils survive; there are few better ways of evaluating what prehistoric people ate than what survives in their mouths.

One must agree with Matthew Spriggs when he concluded that successful collaboration between prehistorians and bioarchaeologists can completely change our understanding of extinct societies. This includes, as the editors summarise, mortuary rituals and their social implications, health and disease, diet and recent human expansions into Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific. The pace of new research is accelerating at a remarkable rate. The editors and all of the contributors to this important volume are to be thanked for summarising so astutely and comprehensively the current state of play. It will indeed be fascinating to reflect a decade hence on the additional insights that must inevitably be forthcoming. One hopes that new means of tracing ancient human DNA will be among them.