This monograph is the third and final volume on the excavations directed by Martha Sharp Joukowsky at the so-called Great Temple complex in the Nabataean city of Petra, Jordan. The fieldwork, involving huge numbers of students and researchers over 17 years (1993–2009), has yielded immense amounts of information. It is always a challenge to organise the publication of such rich and complex material—and the more finds, structures, methods and specialists involved, the more complex such publications grow to be.

The Brown University team have partly solved this problem of ever growing complexity by combining hard-copy publication with an online Open Context database, where the reader can turn for more detailed information about the finds (although not all are registered in the database; for an overview of its structure and content, see pp. 29–30). While the database is an extremely useful tool—indeed, the online, open-access availability of this material represents best practice—some readers may wish that more information, as well as illustrations, had been included in the hard-copy publication. In practice, however, the decision to put much of the material in a digital archive was made on the basis of the huge quantity of finds, and one can only imagine how difficult it must have been to choose what to publish where. So despite wishful thinking about a comprehensive printed monograph, the combination of hard-copy and online publication is the most effective solution for providing users with the complete dataset and the ability to make full use of it.

The present volume focuses on the architecture of the complex and the material culture recovered during the excavations. The volume is organised into two sections: part 1 concerns the architecture and is divided into nine chapters; part 2 deals with material culture in 16 chapters, including ceramic assemblages, terracottas, glass, coins, inscriptions and sculpture. A substantial summary by Joukowsky at the end of the volume briefly touches upon the contents of all the individual chapters and highlights the most important findings.

Part 1, which covers the architecture and layout of the complex, presents the excavations of the ‘Theater-in-Temple’, which is published here in its entirety for the first time. This is an intriguing structure and the excavators come to no definitive conclusion as to what prompted the construction of this feature within the temple complex. That it functioned as an odeion seems to be the most plausible suggestion, although the precise cultural and social context remains uncertain. The baths of the Roman and Byzantine periods are also presented in this section, as are the enigmatic sculpted relief panels from the Great Temple, which, despite a thorough study, still cannot be placed within the larger decorative scheme of the complex. Regardless, these reliefs remain fascinating examples of a time when Petra's inhabitants drew on both local and wider artistic styles to articulate a unique sculptural tradition.

One aspect of the Great Temple excavations to highlight is the challenge faced when working with heavily disturbed stratigraphy. As stated in the short section on the ceramic assemblages from the Residential Quarter, it is clear that most of the excavated contexts had been disturbed prior to investigation. Such a situation is frequently encountered at multi-period sites where cycles of occupation, transformation, destruction and abandonment may extend across many centuries. In the case of the ceramic assemblages published here, for example, less than one per cent of the sherds belong to the periods when the Residential Quarter was inhabited, reflecting a “loss of context information” (p. 215) that has inhibited understanding of phasing and chronology. One way of dealing with heavily disturbed contexts is full quantification, where every single ceramic sherd is recorded and processed. This, however, demands a huge on-site team. Another method is to pay more attention to secondary contexts (later fills and their compositions) in order to determine the reasons for their formation, such as natural accumulation or intentional fills, which in turn gives insight into the ceramics of earlier periods as well. In the present volume, however, only two contexts are presented in the section on site dating based on ceramic material.

Lamps, glass, coins, inscriptions, worked bone, archaeozoological material and human skeletal remains, ballista balls and terracottas are all well presented. The latter demonstrate a preference for the ‘camel rider’ type typical in the Near East, where it is only occasionally surpassed in frequency by the ‘naked female figurine’ type, also found at the Great Temple complex. Reference to the important research on the terracottas undertaken by C. Tuttle is helpful and his PhD dissertation (2009), which includes 777 terracotta figurines from the Nabataean realm, remains a publication desideratum in the form of a monograph. In general, these sections on the material culture give insight into the composition of the types and dating of the various categories of material culture and show the complexity involved when trying to understand such material in the context of a multi-period architectural complex.

Without doubt, this final volume on the excavations of the Petra Great Temple by Brown University completes a series of publications that collectively set an example for future investigations at complex sites such as Petra.