It is rare to see a new archaeology book of nearly a thousand pages and even rarer for such a volume to focus on historical archaeology. This bounty is despite the tome's consistent focus on developments in the field in the last 20 or so years. Each chapter acknowledges important previous contributions, but the stance is firmly grounded in recent work, with an eye toward the future of the field. The book is bursting at the seams with the potential of historical archaeology. Despite the handbook's hefty size, a main takeaway is that it represents only the tip of the iceberg of current thought and practice in historical archaeology.

The five coeditors—Charles Orser, Andrés Zarankin, Pedro Funari, Susan Lawrence, and James Symonds, all of whom are leading historical archaeologists—brought together a diverse, stellar group of authors for the 46 chapters. Brazilian scholarship is especially well represented. Certainly, well-known senior scholars from different parts of the world are prominent authors, but middle and early career scholars also make excellent contributions. A scan of the index shows that authors of the volume consider the work of a wide range of scholars—including Indigenous, Black, and Latinx or Latin American historical archaeologists—a handful of times, whereas only a few scholars who are not authors in the volume, such as Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Eleanor Casella, Roberta Gilchrist, Randall McGuire, and Barbara Voss, are discussed more than 10 times, evidence that the volume authors are generally even-handed in their coverage of perspectives and contributions.

Each chapter offers a thoughtful but brief glimpse at the high points of a much wider body of work on themes, approaches, and methods. Many are deft reviews of aptly chosen and illustrative examples of chapter topics and themes. For example, in Chapter 18, Elizabeth Scott places feminist historical archaeology within wider trends in feminist scholarship; clarifies what qualifies an approach as feminist; thoughtfully discusses key theoretical stances of Black feminism, masculinity, queer theory, and intersectionality; and then surveys key research topics, thereby providing a holistic view supported by abundant examples. Some grapple with their subject by offering in-depth analysis of a key issue or two and fewer but more detailed case studies, such as the rich case studies that Rui Gomes Coelho includes to illustrate examples of the politics of interpretation (Chapter 17) and Mark Leone's succinct evaluation of the state of critical theory (Chapter 16). On a related Marxian theme of the mode of production (Chapter 22), Per Cornell emphasizes philosophical, economic, and historical works more than archaeological examples.

The handbook is divided into five unequal parts that begin with the field's history; move on to central concerns, theoretical approaches, and “subjects”; and then end with regional overviews. Part 1, “Historical Development,” consists of a single chapter by Adam Fracchia that frames what historical archaeology is and outlines key trends, particularly relevance (asking questions that matter), diversity and inclusion, and heritage practices. Even though his review concentrates on English-language sources, he observes that the field is growing internationally while slowing in the United States.

Part 2, “Core Issues and Topics,” deals with expected haunts of colonialism (Chapter 3, Stephen Silliman), capitalism (Chapter 7, Jonathan Prangell), and race (Chapter 5, Anna Agbe-Davies, complemented by Terrence Weik's Chapter 8 on enslavement and emancipation). Welcome additions to these haunts assess sexuality (Megan Springate, Chapter 6), ontology (Chapter 4, Vinicius Melquiades and Bruno Ranzani da Silva), CRM (Joe Joseph, Chapter 10), and community engagement (Chapter 9, Sarah Miller). Both Chapter 11 (“Conflict Archaeology” by Iain Banks) and Chapter 12 (“Contemporary Archaeology” by Laura McAtackney) debate the place of these topics within and beyond historical archaeology. The last chapter in Part 2—Chapter 13 by Peter Davies—is a helpful overview of major advances in methodological and analytical techniques that would have served well as the first chapter of Part 4, which has chapters devoted to each of the methodologies Davies summarizes.

Chapters in Part 2 invoke the primary theoretical orientations emphasized in Part 3: feminist (Chapter 18 by Elizabeth Scott and Chapter 21 by Loredana Ribeiro and Lara da Paula Passos); Marxian (Chapter 19 by LuAnn Wurst and Quentin Lewis and Chapter 22 by Per Cornell), including critical (Mark Leone, Chapter 16) and politically aware (Rui Gomes Coelho, Chapter 17) approaches; and materiality (Chapter 14, José Roberto Pellini) and environmental perspectives, including the Anthropocene (Chapter 20, Diogo Menezes Costa). The focus of this part is tighter than in the other parts, with an emphasis on Marxian approaches. LouAnn Wurst and Quentin Lewis's (Chapter 19) discussion of key ideas and the dynamics of Marxism is refreshingly wry and lucid. Jeff Oliver's (Chapter 15) survey of interdisciplinarity is less about a particular theoretical approach than the challenges and benefits of a dialogue and engagement across disciplines and beyond to wider audiences.

Part 4, “Subjects,” explores methodologies such as isotope bioarchaeology (Chapter 23, Kate Britton and Eric Guiry), buildings archaeology (Chapter 28, Agustín Azkarate), GIS (Chapter 27, Edward González-Tennant) and landscape analysis (Chapter 29, Stephen Rippon), and the study of botanical remains (Chapter 33, Fernando Astudillo and Sarah Walshaw) and faunal remains (Chapter 31, David Landon and Ana Opishkinski, and Chapter 32, María Jimena Cruz). Historical methodologies are covered in chapters about primary sources (Chapter 25, Deni Seymour) and oral history (Chapter 26, Kerry Massheder-Rigby). Seymour offers a careful, systematic, and detailed analysis of narrative texts relating to the Juh-Cushing battle site in Arizona as a case study. Fernanda Codevilla Soares (Chapter 24) breaks the handbook's rule of covering only the last 20 years or so of developments but for a good reason. Soares's overview of twentieth-century trends in the analysis of historical artifacts provides the needed historical context for considering the impact of “typological tyranny” (p. 450) and the potential for applying nonprescriptive typologies in the case study of archaeological materials from Antarctica. Like the other chapters in Part 4, Chapter 30 by Sherene Baugher and Richard Veit, which focuses on gravestone and cemetery studies, is a valuable, interestingly written update to a well-established topic for historical archaeologists.

Part 5, “Regional Overviews,” has a satisfyingly comprehensive scope. All continents have a chapter, with two devoted to areas in Africa (Chapter 34, Natalie Swanepoel, and Chapter 35, Alfredo González-Ruibal) and a chapter each on eastern (Chapter 43, Barry Gaulton and Catherine Losier) and western (Chapter 44, Kelly Dixon) North America (Canada and the United States). Gaulton and Losier concentrate on the theme of mobility and movement in fishery contexts of different scales. Dixon also focuses on a key issue—defining what precisely is the American West—and then delves into important contexts, such as Asian American archaeologies and varying approaches to historical archaeology in western North America, including Indigenous archaeology and community-based archaeology. Contributions focusing on Latin America (Chapter 40, Alasdair Brooks and Macros André Torres de Souza) and the Caribbean (Chapter 39, Krysta Ryzewski) manage to cover a dizzying array of contexts and themes, highlighting not only central issues of the African diaspora and plantation archaeology but also distinctive projects dealing with topics such as “dark” archaeologies of political oppression. Stephen Acabado and Ellen Hsieh (Chapter 37) note that most of the historical archaeological projects in Asia have been the result of cultural heritage management. Their examples primarily draw on projects in Taiwan, the Philippines, China, and Japan; other regions such as India do not figure prominently, if at all. James Flexner (Chapter 38) highlights one of the haunts of historical archaeology, capitalism, in Oceania. In her discussion of historical archaeology in Europe, Natascha Mehler (Chapter 41) addresses issues of the definition of historical archaeology, questions of scale, and, as do many chapters in this volume, the importance of archaeologies of the recent past and the contemporary world. Harold Mytum (Chapter 42) opts for an encyclopedic review of the practice of historical archaeology in the United Kingdom and Ireland, covering key legislation and major themes. Joanita Vroom (Chapter 36) concentrates on the Ottoman Empire in her discussion of historical archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. This part also includes a cogent overview and discussion of maritime archaeology (Chapter 45) by Ben Ford. The volume finishes at the end of the world (from some perspectives): Antarctica (Chapter 46 by Zarankin and Melisa Salerno).

Although the handbook claims to be for “non-archaeologists who have an interest in historical archaeology,” those readers might find some of the text tough going. The writing in general is clear but often assumes some familiarity with archaeology, theoretical concepts, and historical developments. Most chapters, however, clearly communicate excitement about the topic at hand. Although I could not imagine assigning the whole book in a university course, I have no doubt I will assign or share individual chapters with undergraduate or graduate students or colleagues who need orientation on a subject. McAtackney's observation that “the emergence of distinct and at times opposing schools of thought within contemporary archaeology reveals the strength and depth of the discipline” (p. 226) rings true for the volume as a whole.

The handbook does an admirable job of capturing the strengths, dilemmas, and promise of historical archaeology.