In this fascinating and important book, Timothy Insoll presents an encyclopaedic treatment of the materiality of a wide range of subjects (e.g. human and animal, living and dead, shrines and healing) and substances (e.g. stone, clay and earth). The scope and breadth of research has the feel of one of Jack Goody's comprehensive cross-cultural studies, but this book has been written explicitly for archaeologists and other students of material culture.

In the introduction, Insoll makes clear that his book is meant to spur archaeologists working in sub-Saharan Africa to examine how African “human agency is ‘exercised within the material world’” (p. 1, citing Gell Reference Gell1998: 18). He argues that researchers in other fields, such as history, social anthropology and art history have long engaged with such subjects but that they have been only “minimally explored” (p. 1) by archaeologists. Insoll is influenced primarily by Gell's work on objects and art, arguing for the importance of materiality, agency and entanglement. The short theoretical introduction provides a useful framework within which to situate the case studies and arguments presented in the subsequent chapters, but because of the unique structure of the volume, the agenda set out in the introduction is kept deliberately broad. Insoll does, however, introduce one concept, “reactive materiality” (p. 2), that is, a situated conception of materiality in which objects (and assemblages of objects) are not creations of ‘tradition’ but rather “dynamic reflections of available materiality” (p. 49). This theoretical insight allows for new readings of composite objects, including fetishes/power objects and healers’ baskets, as well as an understanding of how material alterations to bodies and animals (and their associated meanings) can be incorporated into new material repertoires.

The book has a novel structure. Each chapter takes up a particular topic including: ‘Bodies and persons’, ‘The dead and the ancestors’, ‘Animals’, ‘Stone, earth and clay’, ‘Shrines’, ‘Landscapes’ and ‘Healing, medicine and divination’. Following brief introductions, these chapters delve more deeply into particular topics; for example, the ‘Bodies and persons’ chapter features sections on ‘The carved body’, ‘The decorated body’, ‘Figures, bodies, agency, and power’, ‘Figurines, fragmentation, and personhood’, ‘Human body parts’, ‘Human sacrifice and cannibalism’ and the ‘Human life cycle’. Within each of these sections, specific examples are presented, drawing on archaeological, historical, art historical and ethnographic data, and the interpretations drawn from them. For example, in ‘The decorated body’ section, one subsection deals with body painting and discussions drawn from nineteenth-century accounts of Azande men, archaeological evidence of pigments found by archaeologists and ochre mining in the Nuba Mountains; other subsections in this chapter cover hairstyles, drawing on evidence from figurines, and ‘Beads and cowrie.’ As one might imagine, the wealth and diversity of these themes are a reflection of Insoll's remarkable research, his careful organisation of the material and his ability to draw together disparate sources in order to reveal new insights and research directions. One of the remarkable aspects of this book is the way that Insoll moves effortlessly between so many disciplines and datasets—including archaeology, anthropology, history and art history. His deep dive into nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnography and his inclusion of art historical sources are especially notable; the latter in particular offer what is an often forgotten and important dataset through which archaeologists can think about material meanings.

It is impossible to summarise the immense range of topics, examples and case studies that Insoll covers in this book, but let me highlight two examples that offer what I think are fascinating explorations of material meanings as well as potential research avenues for archaeologists. I was intrigued by the brief discussion in the section on ‘Internal bodies and figurine agency’ and the various ways in which internal cavities, pierced holes and other voids were crucial to people's understanding of the materiality of figurines. Some of these cavities were for the insertion of substances or the pouring of libations; others were used to conceal objects or substances placed within figurines and then sealed up. A second example involves rock gongs and an archaeology of acoustics (pp. 197–203) in which Insoll explores the way that resonant rocks were incorporated into public announcements, rituals, performances and rain-making. As with many of Insoll's case studies, these two examples ask archaeologists to look differently at the material record and to probe the rich materiality that can be appreciated by looking at objects in new ways, as well as focusing on those aspects that may appear to be mundane.

In sum, this book offers African archaeologists many paths to explore and new points of entry into thinking about the materiality of archaeological assemblages, especially for those researchers that might not be inclined to do so. The way in which this book will be used, I predict, is not as an assigned reading in an undergraduate or graduate course, but rather as a resource to which students and scholars will return again and again as they mine its rich examples and insights.