Recent years have seen increasing archaeological attention devoted to the information that can be extracted from cremated human remains, with a proliferation of conference sessions, edited volumes, and publications designed to bridge gaps between method, theory, and interpretation. In Cremation and the Archaeology of Death, Jessica Cerezo-Román, Anna Wessman, and Howard Williams expand on the 2011 Society for American Archaeology session and subsequent Amerind Foundation seminar that also led to the publication of Transformation by Fire: The Archaeology of Cremation in Cultural Context (Kuijt, Quinn, and Cooney, 2014). The new edited volume builds on these earlier discussions, incorporating themes and participants from a follow-up session at the 2012 conference of the European Association of Archaeologists. Unsurprisingly, the editors’ stated intention is to assemble a collection of chronologically wide-ranging studies with an explicitly European focus, with northern Europe and Britain and Ireland receiving the most scholarly attention. Similarly, while the periods covered range from the Mesolithic to the present day, the majority of case studies examine either late prehistory or the Anglo-Saxon period.

The book is divided into three sections. Part I, “Relational Fiery Technologies,” has the greatest geographic and methodological breadth and investigates the relationship between cremation and alternative mortuary practices. The first three chapters summarize variability and patterning in the dispersed cremations of Mesolithic northwest Europe (Gray Jones, Chapter 2), shifting funerary practices and concepts of the body and status during the Hallstatt period in central Europe (Rebay-Salisbury, Chapter 3), and similarities in body management practices that link cremation and inhumation in Anglo-Saxon England (Nugent, Chapter 4). Together, these essays situate their regional documentation of cremation practices within larger discussions of status, the body, and ideological links to other forms of mortuary disposal.

In one of the few non-European case studies, Goldstein (Chapter 5) likewise delves into spatial patterning and structural relationships to frame her discussion of the “crematory” at Aztalan, Wisconsin. She argues for a likely link between Mississippian cremation practices and transformative technologies such as copper working while calling attention to the visual and symbolic impact of such ritual performances, noting that “someone who witnessed these fiery events would not soon forget them or their meaning” (p. 103). Finally, the most distinct chapter in this section, and indeed the volume, is Ubelaker's cautionary methodological discussion of identifying taphonomic factors in cases of thermal alteration of human bone (Chapter 6).

The opening of Part II, “Transforming and Commemorating with Cremation,” focuses on the Bronze Age. Cooney (Chapter 7) details the use of cremation pit cemeteries as one means of memorializing individuals and maintaining community identities in Bronze Age Ireland, while Röst (Chapter 8) covers the complex temporality and marked variability in practice apparent at Late Bronze Age cemeteries in Sweden. These pieces emphasize the complicated and variable relationship between cremation and commemoration in late prehistory, a theme echoed in subsequent chapters. For example, Cerezo-Román and colleagues (Chapter 9) weave together historical accounts and archaeological evidence to unpack the intersection between local and Roman mortuary practices in Gallo-Roman Belgium. Finally, Wessman and Williams (Chapter 10) outline the ways in which the underappreciated architectures of cremation cemeteries in Anglo-Saxon England and Iron Age Finland were used to structure and channel practices allowing for the construction of social memory and identity.

The volume closes with Part III, “Space and Time in Cremating Societies,” which explores the tempo and patterning of cremation at scales ranging from cemeteries to regions and decades to millennia. Chapters 11 and 12 both focus on northern European prehistory, with Saipio (Chapter 11) interrogating assumptions about the supposedly “anomalous” nature of cremations in the Mesolithic and Neolithic of Fennoscandia and Harvig (Chapter 12) examining the shift in ritual focus from postcremation burial to cremation in Bronze and Iron Age Scandinavia. Squires (Chapter 13) brings an innovative perspective to the seasonality of Anglo-Saxon cremation, considering how shifts in the annual availability of storage space, fuel, and labor would have affected the parameters of this mortuary practice. Williams and Wessman's closing chapter (Chapter 14) incorporates many of the themes from the volume—strategies of memorialization, evolving mortuary ritual, and synchronic variability in practice—into the modern era in their examination of the Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki.

Overall, the volume achieves its stated goal of acting as a “challenge to simplistic narratives of cremation in the past and present” (p. 9), particularly in its emphasis on variability within cremation practices and the underappreciated commensurability between cremation and other forms of mortuary treatment. The authors draw upon a rich but scattered literature in an impressively detailed way, making the book an essential resource for European archaeologists working in these regions and periods. Additionally, the volume's emphasis on more deeply theorizing archaeological approaches to cremation, while underscoring the information that can be gleaned from synchronic and diachronic variability in funerary ritual, makes it a welcome addition to the library of any archaeologist concerned with mortuary practices more broadly.