Materializing Colonial Encounters is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on the archaeology of colonialism. Focusing specifically on African archaeologies, these thoughtful essays are important case studies that will also be of use to those interested in the cross-cultural comparisons of colonial encounters. The volume's emphasis on the materiality of hybrid methods and knowledges also places it squarely in the forefront of the contemporary theorizing in colonial archaeology.

The volume begins with an excellent introduction by Richard followed by four parts focused on the interrelated themes of circulations, mediations, memory, and power and concluding with two discussion chapters by Thiaw and Rowland. The chapters in the volume are of considerable diversity, but, as articulated by Richard in the volume introduction, they are tied together by two central questions. First, “how did material worlds intervene in the making of colonial lives and conditions” and, second, “what can archaeological evidence and readings of the past tell us about the material foundations of imperial dynamics?” (p. 2). This emphasis on materiality, in its broadest sense, is the true strength of the volume and one that makes this volume necessary reading for scholars working on colonial archaeologies outside of Africa and also for those not specifically interested in colonialism.

Part I, “Circulations,” includes two chapters linked by a common focus on the movement of cowries. In the first, Swanepoel considers the role of cowries as currency in the Northern Territories of Ghana, especially examining how they continued to circulate even as coins and notes were introduced as formal colonial currencies. The second chapter, by Stahl, one of the stand-out chapters of the volume, examines the cowry trade at a more global scale, considering how cowries circulated into Africa while ivory simultaneously circulated into England. Stahl examines how the movements of these materials shaped not just the locale of the colony, but also how flows of objects simultaneously transformed European metropoles.

In Part II, “Mediations,” Brink examines the role of language, text, storytelling, and architecture among the free burghers on the Cape of Good Hope, while Crossland adopts a Peircean semiotic approach to consider belief and missionization in Madagascar during the nineteenth century. Unlike many archaeological studies that employ a Peircean framework, Crossland focuses on the role of the interpretant in the triadic process of signification, rather than the material structure of the sign/object relationship. This approach nicely highlights the different meanings that the establishment of mission schools had for different colonial actors.

Part III, “Memory,” consists of two chapters. First, Wynne-Jones adopts the idea of a “biography of practice” in order to emphasize performance at the site of Vumba Kuu on the Swahili Coast, allowing her to shift perspectives from object and person to action and practices. In the following chapter, Esterhuysen explores the materiality of colonial conflict between Boer trekkers and the Kekana Ndebele. Using archaeological evidence from Historic Cave, the site of a lengthy siege, Esterhuysen explores how European objects and human bodies were deployed in colonial struggle, as well as how decorated ceramics index shifting political alliances and influence.

Part IV of the volume explores power in colonial contexts and includes three chapters. The first, by Kus and Raharijaona, interrogates the Malagasy word tany, variously understood as earth, dirt, land, or soil, and examines the various ways the word operates as a (Peircean) sign in the struggle for the construction of and resistance to state formation. Richard explores power in the Sinn region of Senegal as a “politics of absence,” where a general lack of material evidence suggests alternative strategies of colonial control, emphasizing less physical colonial materialities. The final chapter of this part considers the South African diamond rush and the “camp culture” that developed among inhabitants of the diamond fields. Looking at the archaeological material recovered from the Halfway House Hotel, Weiss notes shifts in ceramic composition from high diversity during the early years of the diamond rush to a later uniformity and increased presence of serving wares, indicating a change from an “initial transitory and anticipatory public culture” to one of permanence and decreased hybridity (p. 284) linked to changes in labor and the racialization and segregation of housing in the diamond fields.

Each of these chapters does critical work in thinking through the ways that objects materially, and sometimes immaterially, mediated African colonial experiences. My largest criticism of the volume relates neither to the editor nor to any of the contributors, but rather to production issues. Small figures and grainy color images combined with a severely limited index do little to help justify the exorbitant cost to purchase this volume. Despite these production limitations, this volume is an important and needed contribution to the literature on the archaeology of colonialism.