On the 19^th of January 2021, the UK government announced that funding for archaeology departments under the Higher Education Teaching Grant would be cut by fifty per cent, with the justification that the ‘priorities of the nation’ are ‘healthcare, STEM, and specific labour market needs’ (Shaw, Reference Shaw2021; Department of Education, 2021). Previously, the UK government recognised that teaching in archaeology involves fieldwork and lab work, in addition to class-based learning, and thereby classed archaeology as an ‘intermediate cost subject’ which meant it received a higher portion of the grant. The January 19^th announcement also directly contradicts the fact that archaeology is currently included on the UK skills shortage list for immigrants (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-shortage-occupations/skilled-worker-visa-shortage-occupations). Henceforth, however, archaeology is to be seen within this neoliberal model as ‘high-cost non-strategic,’ making explicit that within this capitalist system, archaeology lacks value. Cobb and Croucher's Assembling Archaeology, is, therefore, extraordinarily timely.

Given the innumerable crises we have confronted in what has been a uniquely challenging year, here, at least, is one crisis that we can confront directly, armed with a clear way forward for disentangling archaeological pedagogy from neoliberalism. Assembling Archaeology aims to ‘radically rethink the relationships between teaching, researching, digging, and practicing as an archaeologist in the twenty-first century’ (p. 1). Drawing on relational theory, and in particular on Deleuze and Guattari's (2003) concept of assemblages (how people and things are intermeshed and interconnected, p. 39), Cobb and Croucher demonstrate that teaching is fundamentally connected to research and that, by acknowledging this and challenging the power structures embedded in higher education, we can also progress the ongoing work of challenging the power structures embedded in archaeological research.

Cobb and Croucher start by recognising the unfunded labour, the silent labour, on this book that was only possible because of their family support networks (p. vii), a tribute that also underlines another message of their work—the current lack of support for research into archaeological pedagogy (p. 14). Over the following ten chapters, they lay out a clear and convincing case for why this needs to change, presenting an argument that is both critical and pragmatic, and that culminates with a series of key recommendations for transforming teaching and learning in archaeology. Given the current marginal status of archaeology within British higher education (and that of the humanities, and humanistic social sciences globally), it is striking how effectively Cobb and Croucher have demonstrated the potential for educators in archaeology to push back from within against the exploitative neoliberal system.

Chapter One, ‘Valuing the Undervalued’, introduces this book as continuing a trend of British research into archaeological pedagogy, which the authors rightly suggest peaked with Hamilakis's (Reference Hamilakis2004) work in the early 2000s (with a few exceptions that includes a number of papers by the authors). Indeed, the central argument of Assembling Archaeology is very similar to a paper published by the authors in Archaeological Dialogues in 2014; although, as may be expected, the book is more theoretically refined, and, crucially, fleshed out with a number of semi-fictional case-studies that make it clear how teaching in archaeology has the potential to marginalise and to empower.

The structure of the book follows the main premise: that ‘learning assemblages are interconnected’ (p. 177); so the case-studies are scattered throughout the book, interwoven with a re-theorizing of archaeological practice and teaching. As they reflect at the end, the reader would have had an easier time with a more ‘package-based’ structure uniting specific case-studies and recommendations for various settings (lecture theatre versus commercial excavation, for example). And yet, this book—and the book's structure—fully embraces, and effectively communicates, the power of thinking through assemblages. Assembling Archaeology is itself an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, Reference Deleuze and Guattari1987: 4), presenting a masterclass on new materialist theory that is formed through the interlinking of student, teacher, and the materiality of learning. In recognition of the recursive nature of pedagogy, this book would not be out of place on a theory course reading list.

Chapter Two, ‘Becoming Archaeologist’ presents the relational theoretical framework for ‘radically disrupting this undervaluation of pedagogy in archaeology and re-centring it within all that we do’ (p. 26). Assemblage theory is a useful way to reconceptualise archaeological pedagogy, highlighting how ‘our research, teaching, and practice are bound together, not that one informs the other, but that these emerge through their relationships with one another’ (p. 51). Cobb and Croucher additionally argue that as learning never stops, we are always ‘becoming archaeologist’—a reassuring adage, especially for those of us (like myself) who are not entirely sure our level of experience is commensurate with the demands of teaching in a global pandemic. With that in mind, I am also sure many would welcome a second volume integrating digital-assemblages!

Chapters Three and Five, ‘The Costs’ and ‘Diversity’ contain the story of Student X. This story makes the power structures embedded within the classroom and the field apparent in highlighting how quickly a student can be made to feel that their voice is not valued within our discipline. I suspect that most readers will identify with at least part of Student X's early experiences in archaeology. Chapter Four, ‘Pedagogy, Political Economy, and Training’ meanwhile illuminates the themes that are reverberating through contemporary society, as neoliberal forces (united with contemporary politics) attempt to construct a model of higher education that is not concerned with the teaching of critical thought. Success is directly linked to financial gain, and employability is understood in opposition to pedagogy (p. 64), which is neglected especially within archaeology because of the focus on ‘output oriented’ training (p. 72). Furthermore, within archaeology comes the debate over who, exactly, is responsible for said ‘training’ of potential commercial archaeologists. Is it the purview of the academic institutions, or of the CRM companies? Cobb and Croucher point out that this is a debate that is almost by design

Once again, assemblages provide an answer, allowing us to recognize that employability (‘the world of work’), in addition to training, education, and archaeology are all interconnected assemblages (p. 75), and must, therefore, be addressed within archaeological pedagogy. Returning to the marginalizing experience of Student X in the field, this does not mean that field ‘training’ must take the form of a ‘traditional banking model’, or knowledge transfer from teacher to student. As demonstrated by the experiential learning approach of the Ardnamurchan Transitions Project (Western Scotland, led by Cobb and colleagues), learning in the field can be self-reflexive, centred around the materiality of the field learning context, and most importantly, continuous. Once again, we are all always ‘becoming archaeologist’.

Chapter Six, ‘The Past in the Present’ builds on Student X's experience of the pervasive excavation hierarchy. It examines how inequalities in archaeology are perpetuated. Archaeology is political, so our pedagogy in archaeology is also political. It is important to note that this position is rightly taken in direct contradiction to the neoliberal agenda that ‘explicitly acts to depoliticize education’ (p. 91). The feminist approach first applied to archaeology nearly three decades ago made clear that diversity in our discipline is key, lest we continue to understand the past through a heteronormative perspective. Nevertheless, as Cobb and Croucher write, while our critical approach to the past is improving, a lack of diversity persists within archaeology. In the UK, the student body in archaeology lacks diversity, while archaeology's workforce (professional and academic) is even less diverse, emphasising the need to understand the barriers that prevent minorities from studying archaeology and continuing in the profession (Doeser et al., 2012; Aitchison & Rocks-Macqueen, Reference Aitchison and Rocks-Macqueen2013). The authors are at their most adept in moments such as these, when they tangibly demonstrate how systemic problems within archaeology may potentially be combatted through the application of materialist theory. Chapter Seven contains four narratives about people in archaeology–a student, lecturer, heritage professional, and field archaeologist—whose (highly) personal experiences all emphasize the political nature of archaeology, and the intersection of multiple different scales such as global, local, personal, and political.

Chapter Eight, ‘A Thousand Learning Assemblages’ addresses these scales, the scales of ‘becoming archaeologist’. One of the key aspects of assemblage theory is that it allows us to ‘explore the emergent properties of the world at multiple different levels’ (Harris, Reference Harris2018: 91). Illustrated with an example of a specific student (which is also employed in Cobb & Croucher, Reference Cobb and Croucher2014), this chapter provides the theoretical grand finale of the book—it convincingly shows how we can achieve intersectionality and challenge neoliberal values by employing a learning assemblages approach. By recognizing that learning assemblages operate, emerge, and are affective at multiple scales (p. 152), we can see how the different learning environments of archaeology are interconnected, and how research itself often emerges through our teaching (p. 153). This book is deceptively small for the depth of insight it contains, and Chapter Eight in particular will require a fair amount of unpacking, as it too is emerging from assemblages on different scales, including our theory and our pedagogy.

Chapter Nine, ‘Cake’—as the title infers, it is happy conclusion for Student X, who remains within archaeology and is able to channel her experiences as a student into how she trains new colleagues in the field as a commercial archaeologist. With her knowledge of the power dynamics of the site and the classroom, she is able to deliver training that ‘consciously emerge(s) from her own experiences as a student’ (p. 161). Finally, in Chapter 10 (‘Learning Assemblages—A Piece of Cake?’) Cobb and Croucher provide a roadmap for transforming archaeological pedagogy, concluding with one foundational recommendation: ‘We must recognise the role of human and non-human entities in the learning process and that teaching and learning emerges through assemblages of human and non-human components’ (p. 165). This is the flat ontological perspective that is fundamental to assemblage theory, which seeks also to challenge Cartesian understandings of the world by removing the artificial duality between human and non-human. As the authors demonstrate through a series of additional recommendations, we can also use the perspective gained by their learning assemblage approach to challenge other pervasive dualisms—like the value ascribed by the neoliberal model to research over teaching.

A few additional points: this book does appear to be very UK- and Europe-specific at times. Although the differing circumstances of the US system are mentioned on occasion, there are elements to the story of Student X which are much harder to envision occurring in an American context. And this is not necessarily a problem, more a question of whether the commonalities of the neoliberal framework that the UK and US share override the institutional differences in how archaeology is taught in the US, not to mention the rest of the world. To what extant is this approach relevant outside the anglophone world? In terms of presentation, Assembling Archaeology is a satisfying little hardback with an appealing cover; it is a shame that the quality of the printing on the inside by Oxford University Press is not quite up to the standard set by the cover. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this book makes the reader badly want cake. Consider this a warning to obtain sufficient supplies prior to reading!