Each of these two books is an edited collection of papers relating to the archaeology of death and burial.

The first, Engaging with the Dead, is one of the outcomes of a research project, ‘The Invisible Dead’, funded by the Templeton Foundation and directed by the editors. The goal of this project was ‘to explore changing beliefs and practices over time’ about ‘death and ways of disposing of the dead’ (page 1). This is a large topic, one of the mainstays of archaeological research for as long as it has existed. A key theme of the volume reviewed is the great variety of ways of treating the dead that exist now and have existed in the past, and the extent to which those practices are or are not visible in the archaeological record. The ‘invisible’ dead are in the great majority, not simply because only a fraction of past populations have been, or ever could be, excavated, but because some burial practices do not leave lasting traces (for example, deposition in water, excarnation or scattering of cremated ashes). The preservation and distribution of human remains, analogous to medieval Christian relics, may also have occurred in the past. Several papers demonstrate many alternative ways of disposing of the dead, including Bruck on Britain in the later Bronze Age, Armit in the Iron Age, and Parker Pearson in a broad survey of burial practice. These clearly bring into question what probably has been an underlying preconception of many researchers, which is that the normal way of disposing of a dead human being is and was burial as an individual, whether cremated or inhumed, with or without associated artefacts, structures or memorials. The variety of practice in disposal is probably ultimately more significant as a cause of ‘invisibility’ than bias in excavation selection and methodology, which does, of course, exist, reviewed here by Roberts. This bias is also demonstrated by comparison between papers dealing with Britain, where research has been relatively intense, and the Levant, where records are not always so detailed. However, the paper by Pfalzner on burials at Quatna in Syria does present detailed examination of undisturbed burials that provide interesting evidence of long-term commemoration of the once-powerful dead.

A main goal of the project, rather than this book, was the creation of a database of burial information for both Britain and the Levant as comparative case studies. Some of the papers present results of this research, with supporting maps and histograms: Jay and Scarre on Neolithic burial in Britain, Bradbury and Philip for the Levant. The paper by Smith on Romano-British burial derives from another project, the Roman rural settlement project. Both projects are welcome attempts to get to grips with the almost overwhelming body of archaeological information produced by recent decades of commercial excavation and otherwise consigned to ‘grey literature’ archives.

All of the papers are clearly written and presented, and all contribute to ideas and knowledge about the treatment of the dead. The book does have separate strands that are perhaps not entirely integrated: the papers based on the project database, which are still starting points as much as finished research; the comparison between two rather different regions, Britain and the Levant; and the papers from outside the project. But overall it is a thought-provoking collection.

The second book, Cremation and the Archaeology of Death, is a collection of papers about cremation in the past and present, one of several recent books on the topic of the archaeology of cremation. It focuses less on the physical evidence and techniques for the interpretation of cremated bones than on the variety of processes and meanings involved in the burning of bodies.

A substantial introduction by the editors is followed by thirteen papers by different authors, each dealing with evidence from different times and places, most of them drawing on their own primary research. Each paper has something different to say about the overall topic of the disposal of human bodies through what is described as ‘fiery technology’. This process is problematised. The simple understanding of cremation as the burning on a pyre of an individual body, followed by collection of the bones or ‘cremains’ and their burial in the ground in a container, only describes some of the burials discussed here. Several of the papers have accounts of fragmentation, partial deposition or even partial burning. Complex processes of disposal and transformation have led to the archaeological evidence being recovered and analysed. The demonstration of this complexity is one of the achievements of this book, as is the cross-cultural whole of the collection. It is valuable for researchers (and reviewers) to venture out of their chronological and geographical comfort zones to think about different types of evidence and different approaches to its interpretation.

However, this may not be the way it is read. The editors have made a good attempt in the introduction at presenting the rationale for the selection of the included papers, and to some extent the book does cohere, but it is also a collection of papers on specific time periods and regions, which will be read separately by specialists in those areas, and it is unbalanced in its coverage, probably the unavoidable result of its origin as a conference session. There is one forensic paper, by Ubelaker, drawing mainly on examples from the USA, and another paper from the Americas by Lynne Goldstein, which opens up interesting ideas about connections between metalworking and cremation that are not followed up in the other papers, all of which deal with Europe, predominantly north-western Europe. One paper, by Williams and Wessman, deals with contemporary cremation burials in an urban cemetery in Finland. This uneven coverage means that it is not wholly successful as an integrated book, but remains a set of papers. Also, this book is not an easy read. Some of the papers are written in a convoluted style and some are slightly repetitive; a virtual red pen hovered in this reviewer’s hand. But all the papers had new insights and overall the book clearly demonstrates that, as the editors say, ‘the contextual analysis of cremated human remains is broader and more complex than normally envisaged’ (page 24).

Between them the many contributors to both books cover a wide range of relevant topics, and both will be useful additions to archaeological libraries. Engaging with the Dead is more easily accessible as not only does it cost less but it is available in e-book format.