This volume springs from a rare scholarly collaboration under the Getty Foundation's ‘Connecting Art Histories’ initiative. A number of junior and senior scholars headed by N. Boymel Kampen came together in an international research project which encouraged ‘intellectual exchange across national and regional borders, especially for younger scholars in countries where art history is an emerging field of study’ (pp. 2–3). The scientific aim of this ‘community of learning’ was ‘to engage with new questions about the nature and development of the art and archaeology of the Roman provinces’ (p. 2). Participants came from different countries and scientific disciplines, and the unusual set-up of the project facilitated lengthy common field trips and a week-long workshop where the foundations of the volume under review were laid. It is a very interesting and inspiring way to go about an international collaboration on this scale, and the strong coherence and synergy which was a result of this closely knit scholarly engagement is reflected throughout the volume. Apart from the introduction, which lays out the history behind the collaboration and the intellectual construct of the project by Kampen, the volume is organised into four parts encompassing nineteen papers in total. The four parts as well as the individual papers are meant to reflect both resonances with each other as well as differences of opinions. Moreover, in line with Kampen's original ideas behind the project, the four parts comprise ‘Approaches to Provincial Contexts’ (Part 1), ‘Innovation, Tradition, Manipulation’ (Part 2), ‘Networks, Movements, Meanings’ (Part 3) and ‘Local Accents in the Imperial Context’ (Part 4).

Part 1. In ‘What is a Province?’ A. Jiménez takes a close look at the concept of the ancient province and sheds light on its research history, which has presented the modern scholar with ample obstacles amongst which the ancient Roman literary sources with their politically charged depictions of the provinces loom greatly. Jiménez encourages us to move beyond the dichotomy of ‘Roman versus native’, to see several Roman cultures throughout the empire and to study how they interacted. In recognising that binary discourses were powerful in Antiquity, she argues that analyses of the material culture should not only concern its relation to the centre/Rome but be rooted in local and regional traditions and contexts, thus acknowledging the complexity of Roman, regional and local identity formations and negotiations. M. Papaioannou, ‘A Synoecism of Cultures in Roman Greece’, thoroughly explores the concept of Romanisation specifically in Roman Greece and suggests the introduction of an alternative term, synoecism, to describe the adoptions and adaptions of Roman cultural norms in Greece. R. Sweetman, ‘Networks: Exile and Tourism in the Roman Cyclades’, convincingly demonstrates why network theories have gained terrain within archaeology, presenting an analysis of the networks of the Cycladic islands in the Roman period. It is clear that these islands were part of active small-world networks and that they were involved in diverse relationships and engagements on a much more sophisticated level than previously assumed, thus being far from mere ‘isolated places suitable only for exile’ (p. 59). Along the same lines, W. Wootton explores the networks of artisans in ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Mosaicist under the Roman Empire’. Through analyses of mosaic workshops from a vast geographical area he sheds important light on how aspects such as movements, collaboration and training via communities of practice can provide new insight into the world of the artists and their lives in the provinces. Part 1 ends with S. Hijmans's ‘Material Matters: Object, Authorship, and Audience in the Arts of Rome's Empire’. He forcefully argues (p. 86) that the art of the provinces has been defined by what it was not (up to Greek standards or metropolis Roman standards). He rightly highlights the tension between aesthetics as an artistic goal and style as a communicative means, arguing that specific styles were intentional and not all chose the ‘Greek classical template’. The contribution is a highly recommendable and thought-provoking read which annihilates the idea of the provinces as artistic/aesthetic backwaters and puts the finger on the soft spot of our modern aesthetically formed approach to ancient artistic practices.

Part 2. The first essay of this part is in dialogue with Hijmans's contribution. D. Mladenović, ‘Developing a “Sculptural Habit”: the Creation of a Sculptural Tradition in the Roman Central Balkans’, brings to the fore the topic of (poor) quality and artistic skill. She argues for a place in scholarship for these aspects through the analysis of sculptures from the Roman Central Balkans. In many ways the juxtapositioning of this contribution with Hijmans's underlines exactly the fundamental idea of the collaboration within Kampen's project; ideas and new ways of thinking spring from debate and scholarly exchange and challenges. The next three contributions address provincial materiality and identity through analyses of funerary monuments (A.D. Rizakis & I. Touratsoglou, ‘In Search of Identities: a Preliminary Report on the Visual and Textual Context of the Funerary Monuments of Roman Macedonia’), coins (K. Cassibry, ‘Coins before Conquest in Celtic France: an Art Lost to Empire’) and mummy portraits and sculpture (M. Bergmann, ‘Mallokouria: Portraits of Local Elite Boys in Roman Egypt’). Common to these contributions is the close attention to the archaeological material and the ways in which it can be used to approach the expressions and communications of the culturally complex realities of life in the provinces. From the perspective of imagery and iconography the theme is considered in the context of architecture and sacrificial practices by C. Moser, ‘The Architecture of Changing Sacrificial Practices in Pre-Roman and Roman Gaul’. She successfully explores how the increasing Roman presence furthered both change and innovation in religious architecture and sacrificial practices at the same time as a coherent connection with the pre-Roman past was practised resulting in ‘the reconciling of imperial-era innovations with pre-Roman, local ritual traditions’ (p. 185).

Part 3. In S. Walker's ‘Celtic Design, Roman Subjects: a Portrait of Marcus Aurelius from Rural Britain’ the focus is on ‘Celtic art’ and Roman art and how the two have been defined and understood depending on the point of departure of the scholarly tradition which viewed them. Walker argues that local Celtic taste and design was successfully combined with the Roman desire for recognisable representation, thus resulting in refined objects that appealed to diverse cultural backgrounds. The local or regional formulations and/or alterations of culture phenomena are also the focus of L. Revell, ‘Footsteps in Stone: Variability within a Global Culture’. She demonstrates convincingly through analysis of a series of plantae pedum reliefs that close attention to aspects such as commissioning, making, placing and viewing, as well as knowledge of religious adherence in both local and wider global contexts, can bring much more nuance to our understanding of social relationships, religious practice and not least the fabric of local identities. The local context of objects and commodities is also at the fore in J. Gates-Foster's ‘Objective Alterity: Import Consumption in the Ports of Roman Egypt’. She rightfully argues for a more prominent position of the immediate local social context of objects and commodities, here pepper, in our approach to ‘the Roman’ outside Rome and stresses the importance of the local/regional networks which facilitated the smaller-scale interactions so often overlooked in the search for the bigger picture. The attention to networks and how objects move and are received in wide geographical and diverse cultural contexts are treated convincingly in the contributions by N.L. Wicker, ‘Roman Medallions in Scandinavia: Shifting Contexts of Space, Time, and Meaning’ and in N.P. Ahuja, ‘The British Museum Hāritī: toward Understanding Transculturalism in Gandhara’. They both demonstrate that the provinces – and beyond – were no passive recipients of Roman culture (p. 244) and that culturally complex iconography should rather be understood as a sophisticated means of acknowledging and maintaining the cultural distinctiveness and identities of varied audiences in society (p. 261).

Part 4 begins with two engaging papers on Roman North Africa; the first explores the religious imagery of Baal Hammon/Saturn (M.M. McCarty, ‘Gods, Masks, and Monstra: Situational Syncretisms in Roman Africa’), and the second engages with urban studies (T. Morton, ‘Constructed Landscape: Designing Urban Centers in Roman Africa’). In ‘Heritage and Homogeneity in the Coinage of early Roman Antioch’ C.F. Noreña investigates how local culture could be articulated in the visual imagery on coins with an eye to the wider context of Roman imperial culture. He convincingly concludes that the type of local identity expressed in the material from Roman Antioch goes hand in hand with a distinct celebration of heritage; both aspects are formulated and perceived within the wider vertical and stratified imperial frame of reference. In the last contribution, ‘Looking at the Classical Past: Tradition, Identity, and Copies of Nobilia Opera in Roman Greece’, V. Di Napoli approaches the Roman taste for Greek sculpture through a focus on context and display setting rather than traditional Kopienkritik or Meisterforschung. Her analysis zooms in on the Greek contexts for Roman period copies of Classical masterpieces, the Doryphoros and the Knidian Aphrodite. She concludes that only small percentages of preserved copies come from Greece and that the Greek attitude towards copies of Classical masterpieces was one of disinterest; yet the display contexts, albeit few, point towards a sense of continuity regarding their original form and meaning: the Doryphoros destined for public display while Aphrodite belonged in the private sphere.

The book is well produced, rich in good-quality maps and colour and black-and-white illustrations, with ample bibliography and a dense set of notes with valuable additional information in most of the contributions. The volume must be praised for its successful attempt at bringing together contributions dealing with very different materials from different theoretical and methodological approaches and presenting them in a coherent and meaningful context. This is reinforced by multiple internal cross-references between the contributions. It is highly recommended to any mature student or scholar not just for its intriguing approaches to the art and archaeology of the Roman provinces but also as an inspiration for the ways in which scholarly collaboration can be furthered through common trips, seminars and intense ongoing debates and discussions amongst and across disciplines. Unfortunately, it is rare to encounter the prerequisite of such endeavours of immersion in academia today.