Edward B. Banning's update to the 2000 edition of The Archaeologist's Laboratory is a most welcome addition to my (virtual) bookshelf, and I expect to use it as a text for my Introduction to Archaeological Lab Sciences course. The first edition and its contemporaries (e.g., Brothwell and Pollard, Handbook of Archaeological Sciences, 2001) are now two decades old, so it has increasingly been a struggle to find books suited to my combined undergraduate- and graduate-level archaeology lab classes. Few books not only are accessible to students and up-to-date but also strike a balance between breadth and depth of topics. Banning's second edition ticks these boxes. Additionally, no one else covers all aspects of data (e.g., the nature of archaeological data as well as issues related to errors, statistical analyses, and presentation) quite like Banning does. This is valuable to me as an instructor because students in this course conduct research involving our collections and present their results in a conference-style talk and poster. I anticipate that many students will benefit, in particular, from Banning's overarching theme of assessing the quality and validity of data on which archaeological arguments or interpretations are based.

This new edition is divided into two roughly equal parts. Part I is a deep dive into archaeological data and its links to research design. Certain topics are also covered in introductory statistics textbooks (e.g., error, probability, sampling), whereas other subjects skew more toward theory (e.g., arrangement taxa), practical issues (e.g., creating databases), and ideas that derive from quality assurance. Oddly, Part I also includes a revised conservation chapter and a new chapter on lab safety, which is barely four pages. Part II focuses on different types of archaeological remains (e.g., flaked and ground stone, ceramics, metal, fauna) and dating (e.g., stratigraphy, dendrochronology). Radiocarbon dating is explored in depth, whereas other techniques (e.g., luminescence) are only name-checked. Part II concludes with a chapter on archaeological illustration and publication. The publication element, less than one page long, seems tacked on, and the illustration aspect could be integrated with the data chapters, especially given recent trends that combine artifact illustration, 3D scans, and other types of shape data. The first edition was, well, a bit unattractive, but the updated illustrations and formatting are much more aesthetically pleasing. Color seems inconsistently used in the figures, but I assume there is a reason for it related to publication and production. I did, however, chuckle at a page from the Munsell color-chart book reproduced as a figure in grayscale.

Updating such a wide-ranging book must not have been a simple task. The first edition was 316 pages, whereas the second is 375 pages. This is misleading, though, because the larger page size accommodates a third more text. Consequently, the new edition is about 50% longer. Among the references in the stone artifact analysis chapter, nearly half are more recent than 2000, attesting to a thorough update to the cited literature. Case studies are a welcome addition. Some examples derive from Banning's expertise in Near Eastern archaeology from the Neolithic to Bronze Age, whereas other case studies span the Paleolithic (e.g., purported bone flutes) to the 1800s (e.g., New England headstone motifs). There is a lot to like, but a few elements seem obscure or obsolete. For instance, stem-and-leaf plots likely made more sense in an age of monospace typewriters than they do in the time of Excel. Additionally, the scatterplot of zirconium (Zr) versus barium (Ba) in Old World obsidian reflects not only outdated 1960s optical spectroscopy data but also the limited state of knowledge at the time—Kenya, one of the most obsidian-rich countries in the world, is represented by just two specimens and the corresponding data points. Comparing these outdated data to newer datasets for Kenyan obsidian could actually highlight some of the issues that Banning discusses (i.e., inadequate sampling of a population can lead to invalid interpretations).

Despite my quibbles, I expect this new edition to become a key textbook for my archaeological lab sciences courses, and I recommend it to others who are teaching similar classes. It is particularly attractive for teaching given that many universities’ libraries have agreements with free access to Springer's e-book archive, which means that our students will not have to spend $120 on one book. I expect to pair the book with readings about analytical techniques that our students use for class projects given that, for example, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)—an important emergent technique for identifying signatures of organic compounds present in sediments and in artifact residues—is mentioned just once in the entire text. It is perhaps for the best that Banning's book does not get bogged down in details about analytical techniques, considering how quickly such discussions tend to become outdated. Consequently, this book should age better than others and remain a valuable teaching resource for many years to come.