For more than a decade now, beginning with Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter's The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (2008), Oxford University Press has produced an impressive line of topical handbooks on late antiquity and early Christianity that has summarized the state of the field in philology and literature, history, theology, and the art and architectural history of the early Christian world. The series now includes more than a dozen handbooks focused either squarely on early Christianity or on related fields such as the late Roman Empire, Byzantium, Judaism, and early Islam that help bracket and contextualize the development of Christianity. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology, edited by David Pettegrew, William Caraher, and Thomas Davis, is one of the latest volumes to be added to the collection, and it continues to uphold the high standards of the series.

The book is divided into four parts, with an introduction by Caraher and Pettegrew that serves as the overall introduction to both the history and historiography of early Christian archaeology. The introduction is particularly helpful since it offers a succinct summary of the earliest archaeological investigations in the early modern period and Enlightenment; followed by the systemization and organization of early Christian archaeology as a distinct subfield in the nineteenth century; and, finally, the expansion of regional and more indigenously managed archaeology across Europe, North Africa, and West Asia from the mid-twentieth century to the present. However, there is no discussion here or anywhere else in the book of the role of colonialism or major political shifts that developed the ideological scope and epistemological foundations of the field, which seems like an oversight, given the current geopolitical climate and push to decolonize and democratize the field of archaeology.

Part 1, “The Archaeology of Ancient Christianity,” consists of only two essays, by James Strange and volume editor Davis, which summarize the history of archaeological investigations into the New Testament. Both essays offer epigraphical and architectural case studies in the Jewish foundations of first-century Christian Palestine, but they also attest to the archaeological impulse to join the “quest for the historical Jesus” that has often dominated biblical studies. Strange and Davis both discuss the occasionally fraught historical relationship between textual scholars and archaeologists, including points of methodological confluence and conflict in the disciplines. However, the terms “New Testament archaeology” and “biblical archaeology” are used uncritically at times, which runs the risk of putting the cart before the horse and belies an ongoing prioritization of biblical tradition over archaeology and its ability to reveal the broader sociohistorical context of the first-century Levant. A more expansive discussion of the terms used in the volume—and the historical debates and controversies surrounding them—would have been helpful to introductory readers.

The book expands considerably with part 2, “Sacred Space and Mortuary Contexts,” which includes seven essays on early Christian burial practices and the architecture of ritualized space. Essays on catacombs, martyria, and funerary practices by Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, David Eastman, and Sherry Fox and Paraskevi Tritsaroli stand out as excellent summaries of the evidence for a distinct funerary culture in late antique Christianity. Charles Anthony Stewart's essay on the development of ecclesiastical architecture and Darlene Brooks Hedstrom's essay on monastic communities help frame not only the historical trajectory of early Christian worship space but also the historiography and methodological approaches that previous generations of archaeologists contributed to the field. H. Richard Rutherford and Dallas DeForest round out the section with well-paired essays on early Christian baptism and bathing culture in the late Roman Empire. Although art and iconography are addressed in the next section, including some of that material in part 2 would have strengthened the section, especially since the essays on monumental space tend to omit interior design aesthetics rather than viewing architecture and art as an integrated whole that early Christian communities would not have separated or compartmentalized so easily.

Part 3, “Art and Artifacts in Context,” includes another nine essays, beginning with a return to early Christian catacombs and their decoration (Fabrizio Bisconti) and progressing through monumental artistic programs in mosaic (Karen Britt), the use of spolia (Jon Michael Frey), and the more limited use of figural sculpture (Troels Myrup Kristensen). The majority of the section, however, focuses on more portable arts, including reliquaries (Galit Noga-Banai), icons (Glenn Peers), pottery (R. Scott Moore), lamps (Maria Parani), and amulets and gemstones (Rangar Cline). Each of the chapters offers an excellent overview of artistic media, iconography, style, and historical context, but more important is the tacit recognition that art history and archaeology are often two sides of the same coin. Nowhere is this more apparent than Peers's essay, “An Anarchéologie of Icons,” which approaches the subject both scientifically and philosophically, revealing a cultural stratigraphy too often overlooked when either discipline ignores the other's unique methodological tools.

Part 4, “Christian Archaeology in Regional Perspective,” is by far the largest section, and its fifteen chapters divide the early Christian world into larger regional and subregional units, beginning with the Levant, Eastern Mediterranean, and Caucasus, and progressing through Italy and Western Europe before ending with North Africa and Egypt. This is perhaps the most valuable contribution to the volume since many of the regions covered are marginalized in the broader history of early Christianity, and the reports of archaeological excavations are not always widely available to Western scholars. Moreover, the juxtaposition of regional chapters allows the reader to examine larger geographical and chronological developments in early Christian settlement patterns; the distribution of theology, architectural typologies, and art; and more indigenous cultural responses to the adoption of Christianity in late antiquity.

At a time when competitors are expanding their series of handbooks and companion volumes for amateur enthusiasts and seasoned scholars alike, Oxford remains at the vanguard of well-researched topical summaries. Pettegrew, Caraher, and Davis are to be commended for offering an impressive range of interdisciplinary voices and expanding both the thematic and geographical horizons of archaeological investigations into Christian origins.