As Helena Hamerow says in her preface, a synopsis of the settlement archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England has long been wanted. The position has changed out of all recognition since reviews were last produced by Fowler and Rahtz in 1976 (Fowler 1976; Rahtz 1976). ‘Neglect’ was perhaps not quite the best word for her to use to explain this, or to blame the attention paid to the early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and their grave goods. The past thirty years have seen a welcome diversification of Anglo-Saxon archaeology, one consequence of which is that from any specialist perspective the overall investment of effort and weight of outputs may appear frustratingly diffuse. As this book itself shows, settlement archaeology is a particularly difficult topic to summarise either theoretically or empirically, not least because the synthesis and publication of the evidence from major sites has proved challenging and slow. This book is concise, but consequently it succeeds in presenting a clear overview of the shape and size of its field, and will not only serve as an introductory guide to the sites and the questions but will also, one hopes, inspire the next generation to further research.

The introductory chapter outlines the history of the study of Anglo-Saxon settlements and undertakes a welcome up-to-date review of the Roman–Anglo-Saxon transition from a settlement perspective. Proportionately, the following two chapters on the basic facts of building types and settlement morphology dominate the volume. The next largest chapter, ‘The ritualisation of domestic life’, reflects the salience of illuminating recent investigations of more esoteric and symbolic rather than utilitarian practices in settlement archaeology. In comparison, the final two chapters on the important contextual factors of farming practices and the structure of society do seem brief. The former is principally a survey of the evidence for cereal crops and their processing, and for specific domesticated animals. Major issues such as infield–outfield and open-field systems, crop rotation, nucleation and manorialisation are at most given a mention. The focus of the book may indeed be on the material character of the settlements themselves, but its title is Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England. A genuinely interesting case is made (pp 88–90) for explaining the apparent Middle Anglo-Saxon surge in the provision of large paddocks in precisely such extensive, landscape-utilisation terms: a tantalising glimpse of the power of more multivalent, contextualised interpretation.

It appears similarly incomplete to conclude the necessary discussion of the extreme rarity (at best) of Continental Germanic-style longhouses, or any other form of cattle stalling, in England (pp 21–2) purely in terms of cultural tradition and implicit ethnic identity without discussing the practical importance of the byre. This issue is alluded to briefly (p 140). Barns and granaries get more attention, but I have long been puzzled at the practice of discussing rather irregular round structures identified now at a few early Anglo-Saxon sites (Dowsby and Quarrington, Lincolnshire; Lanton Quarry and Thirlings, Northumberland; Black Bourton, Oxfordshire) as traditional British roundhouses or even shrines without recognising that they might be Rutenberge or ‘helms’ of a kind quite familiar on Continental Germanic settlements (Reference ZimmermannZimmermann 1992; cf Taylor et al Reference Taylor, Allen, Bayley, Cowgill, Fryer, Palmer, Precious, Rackham, Roper and Young2003, 237–9, 273 and refs; Reference WaddingtonWaddington 2010, 15; Reference GilbertGilbert 2008, 153, 155–6). This is not to suggest that those Continental parallels determine the only realistic identification of the Anglo-Saxon examples, or that a single interpretation must be assigned to all examples. However, only to consider the more exotic suggestions and to overlook a prosaic alternative is surely inappropriate.

With fifty-one figures, this book is well illustrated for its size, but even more would have been helpful, especially for the practical student use that must have been a primary objective in its shaping. A case in point is the paucity of illustration of joinery and building techniques discussed on pp 27–31: the ground plan of a building from Steyning (fig 2.5) is not particularly illuminating. For full effectiveness, this book will need to be read in a very well-stocked library where the references can be followed up, and that is unfortunately going to limit its effectiveness outside Oxford, Cambridge and London. Nonetheless, a paperback version at an appropriate price will be of value for studies of Anglo-Saxon settlement archaeology for many years.