The lands bordering the Bristol Channel provide some of the best data for studying Late Antiquity in Britain. There is a wealth of late Roman data and the fifth and sixth centuries are represented by a number of nationally important sites. Bowles’ volume is the publication of a thesis that attempts to use post-colonial theory to explain how material culture in this region was negotiated and reworked through ‘hybridisation’, ‘mimicry’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘resistance’ in the immediately post-Roman period to forge new identities.

The explicit use of archaeological theory in a period that all too often falls back on hazy and lazy notions of ‘Roman’, ‘Anglo-Saxon’, ‘pagan’ and ‘Christian’ as interpretive frameworks is to be welcomed. Also laudable is B.'s desire to study the societies of the fifth and sixth centuries as entities in their own right, rather than as adjuncts to Roman Britain or Anglo-Saxon England. However, the integration of the theory with the empirical evidence leaves much to be desired.

A useful starting point is B.'s use of the label ‘Late Antiquity’. For me the value of Late Antiquity (as a theoretical construct) is that it reconnects insular problems with broader Continental issues and it allows us to take a long view from the late third century through until the seventh century. However, B.'s late antiquity (in lower case) is defined as a purely insular, post-colonial period (7) stretching from a.d. 400 to 600 (30). Here lies a danger — the creation of British ‘late antiquity’ as a fashionable pseudonym for ‘sub-Roman’ or the ‘Celtic west’.

The main body of the volume is devoted to a detailed, although not always critical or careful, review of architectural styles, ceramics and personal items used at three famous post-Roman sites: Dinas Powys, Cadbury Castle and Cadbury-Congresbury. The full range of evidence (both late and post-Roman) from the region is not considered (31). Essentially, B.'s argument is that the ‘Roman’ identity of fourth-century Britain was actively rejected during the course of the fifth century. Thus stone villas gave way to hybrid timber halls and later, as neo-Celtic identities crystallised, roundhouses (67–8). Pottery was symbolic of Romanitas and thus rejected, which led to aceramic societies (although Roman pot sherds could be hybridised into new and potent symbolic objects) (91).

The major problem is that one struggles to understand why these changes occurred and the post-colonial theory fails to help. B. asks us to believe that everything in society, from the basest pot sherd and lace tags to mosaics and hillfort defences were symbolic of identity (although given that gender, age and social standing are left out of the mix this ‘identity’ is nebulous at best). This seems difficult to believe and the evidence marshalled to support this interpretation flimsy. The villa – hall – roundhouse argument is overly simplistic. It is not enough to say rectangular equals Roman, round equals Celtic — the social use of space within these structures and its changing nature must be considered. Furthermore, are we really to believe that entire suites of material culture were dumped simply because people were not interested in being Roman anymore (75)? These items were not abstractions but real things used in people's lives. They were the means by which people had understood and controlled their world for the preceding three and a half centuries.

The main point to come across through reading this volume is that it is under-researched. This is not an observation I make lightly. The Roman background to B.'s work is crucial, yet it is dealt with through derivative secondary sources. This leads to some startling conclusions (such as that only four pagan temples in the region survived Theodosius’ anti-pagan rescript (40)). The shift from villa to hall is made without even a mention of ‘squatter occupation’ and what that means for villas. Even major theoretical issues, such as the validity of the term ‘Celtic’, are ignored and the burial evidence from the region, which is surely significant, is only mentioned as an aside.

Typographical errors are rare but glaring: Julian the Apostate reigned from a.d. 61–3 (40), Tania (instead of Brenda) Dickinson wrote a samian report (81), and the villa at Holcombe is in Somerset, not Devon where it was excavated (42).

In conclusion, B. is to be congratulated on publishing his thesis so rapidly. However, time and reflection might have distilled a better journal article from the contents of this volume.