This book is the result of a conversation in which Alastair Brooks (now University of Leicester) and Natascha Mehler (German Maritime Museum, Bremerhaven) engaged in comparing nationalism in Scotland and Bavaria. This in turn led to the organisation of a session held at the Society for Historical Archaeology in Quebec City in 2014. These two European territories had gone in opposite directions concerning nationalist sentiment. Their distinct differences led the editors of this volume to the realisation that there was a gap in the archaeological literature on nationalism with regard to the historical period. They concluded that the concepts of ‘national identity’ and ‘nationalism’ are not the same thing, i.e. they oppose those who contend that the former inevitably directs us to the latter, and that a book on nationalism and material culture in the modern period, from an archaeological point of view, would demonstrate this. It would be possible to argue, however, that Bavarian costume, one of the examples used by them to illustrate this idea, would be described by many not as a national costume displaying national identity, but rather as a regional costume. The role of regions in the construction of state nationalism has been studied by several authors (Augusteijn & Storm, Reference Augusteijn and Storm2012; Dickenson, Reference Dickenson2013; Storm, Reference Storm2003), and the editors themselves acknowledge this in their introductory chapter.

Since the emergence of the debate on the relationship between nationalism and archaeology, mainly in the 1990s, most discussions have focused on the place that material culture dating from the prehistoric to the medieval period occupied, and still does, in nationalist narratives. In contrast, this volume goes beyond the chronological span usually dealt with by archaeologists to focus on the modern period. In its pages it is possible to find a range of examples of how material culture has been used (or prevented from being used) to reinforce nationalist narratives, from the fourteenth century until today. The way in which these narratives were and still are being developed is also a matter for discussion. An important focus of the book is to show how historical archaeologists potentially are exceptionally well-placed to analyse how the development of modern nationalism and national identity is reproduced in the post-medieval archaeological record, as it was during this period that political nationalism evolved. Moreover, this volume challenges the state of the art, because―by studying the failed nation, the aspiring nation, the nation-to-be, and the region as an intricate part of the nation―the authors have taken a starting point that is hard to find in other studies (which usually start with the idea of the successful nation). Geographically, this book demonstrates an emphasis on Europe, debating a few nationalist movements in northern and north-western Europe—Scotland, Manx, Ireland, Denmark—and Central Europe, as illustrated by Bavaria, Slovenia, and Carinthia. However, it also moves beyond that part of the world to include examples from Turkey, New Sweden, and New Mexico in the United States of America (US) and, finally, Easter Island.

After the introduction, which serves as Part I of the book, Part II deals with ethnogenesis and identity creation. Chapter 1 by Fowler and Noël deals with Acadia, in today's Canada, from where French settlers were deported in the late 1750s. This event became the focus of a series of identity narratives in the nineteenth century that are still remembered by dispersed descendent communities. The archaeological sites dated in the modern period that archaeologists have chosen to excavate show a bias towards Acadian settlements before and not after the deportation. With their work, archaeologists are, therefore, actively collaborating in the construction of Acadian identity and of what the author calls Acadian nationalism. However, information about whether or not the archaeologists are Acadian themselves would have been important to interpret the significance of this bias. It is quite possible that archaeologists are taking the opportunity to work on sites that people are going to find interesting and that perhaps governments are going to pay for as part of a tourism development programme. The archaeologists’ collaboration would still be present, but it would be of a very different nature.

Chapters 2 and 3 deal directly or indirectly with Slovenia. The use of material culture for identity formation is Pedrovnik's focus in Chapter 2. She looks at the ‘othering’ of the ‘Turk’ in the border regions of the Habsburg Empire, in particular that of Slovenia. In this territory, a series of fortifications or tabors were built to protect people from marauding Ottoman troops in the sixteenth century. Today they represent the materiality of frontier Orientalism, defined as a type of Orientalism in frontier regions with metaphoric reminders of the past coming from many different sources, archaeology being only one of them. This materiality, the author tells us, is today the basis for one of the origin myths of Slovenian nationalism. In Chapter 3, the comparison between the Austrian region of Carinthia and neighbouring Slovenia presents an interesting contrast because, despite their geographical proximity, the development of a national identity in the Austrian region was weak. Eicker argues that the Karnburg and Prince's Stone have emerged as symbols of Carinthia and that complaints were expressed when Slovenia suggested using the image of the Prince's Stone on a coin. For several decades, archaeologists have collaborated in the formation of Carinthian (regional) identity, from Dinklage's identification of the oldest medieval strata as Germanic, to recent fieldwork at the Karnburg, which has also interpreted the remains from c. 1000 as Carinthian.

Chapter 4 centres its discussion on the question of identity in nineteenth-century New Mexico. This was a period in which the territory went from being a Spanish colony to forming part of the Republic of Mexico and finally to becoming part of the US. The history of the settlement of San Miguel del Vado is described from its establishment in 1794 to the first decades in which it was part of the US. Archaeology shows how Hispanic traditions were maintained and even reinforced under the new rule, which Jenks, the article's author, interprets as the citizens’ reaction against Anglo-American attacks on their common lands, the ejidos, which the new legal system considered as areas of public domain and not, as previously, under community ownership. The concluding section introduces a new discussion on gender and civic identities as marked in the town square.

Part III of the book, the largest of all with six chapters, is concerned with the manipulation of national identities and archaeology. In Chapter 5, Mytum deals with the Celtic countries in the British Isles: Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. The comparison between them shows a wide diversity in the ways Celtic heritage has been used to display identity. Some of these regions have made greater use of material symbols identified as Celtic. In the case of others, such as the Isle of Man, the remains of buildings to impose an alternative identity have come to represent Manx identity.

Horning returns to Irish historical archaeology in Chapter 6, stressing the post-colonial influence on Ireland's nationalism and the selection of data in the way the past is portrayed. The author comments on the exhibit organised at the recently-opened Museum of Country Life (2001), highlighting that its emphasis on indigenous crafts contrasts with the abundance of mass-produced commodities, many of them non-locally produced, found in the archaeological excavations that are ignored in the display. This selection continues a line of practice that has earlier roots, as explained with reference to the re-launch of the Ulster Journal of Archaeology in 1938, in which articles legitimating the division of Ireland were published: archaeological interpretations of Neolithic megaliths, Iron Age earthworks, and the Broighter Gold Hoard provided a past for the border. In parallel, the construction of identity also included the destruction of some historical buildings, including numerous medieval tower houses, which were seen as symbolising past power, as well as others seen as monuments of oppression. It seems relevant to indicate, Horning explains, that an interest in Ireland's medieval archaeology did not attract local archaeologists until the 1970s, with post-medieval archaeology lagging even further behind. She sees the potential of archaeology not only to reinforce the two traditions but also to propose evidence for syncretic practices. The historical archaeology of Northern Ireland also has potential for the descendants of the nineteenth-century Irish diaspora.

Moving on to Denmark, in Chapter 7 Comer looks at the ideological roles that sites related to Danish royalty play in the creation and reinforcement of ‘Danish-ness’. The connection between the Danish monarchy and Christianity has been maintained for centuries and archaeologists have contributed to it with projects related to the Jelling Mounds and Roskilde Cathedral. Heritage professionals have also prioritised sites linked to these two aspects in World Heritage proposals, illustrations of this being the Jelling Mounds, Runic Stones, and Church World Heritage Site. There, one of the Runic stones has an inscription related to King Harald bringing Christianity (and therefore civilisation) to Denmark. Comer finishes her article proposing that by emphasising ideals and moral attributes, rather than ethnicity, archaeology could assist in a re-definition of ‘Danish-ness’ in today's multicultural Denmark.

The two following chapters deal with naval history. In Chapter 8, Belarus focuses on historical ship archaeology. It was only in the last decade of the twentieth century that the study of early-modern ships began to be considered as coming under the purview of archaeologists and not only of historians. This explains why much of the article analyses German historical narratives on ships, although it seems that in the publications under discussion the influence of nationalism is limited to the academic tradition in which experts work, and not necessarily to their interpretations. In Chapter 9, Sarah Newstead focuses on Plymouth and Francis Drake's victory over the Spanish Armada. The author describes a few excavations run by Plymouth City Museums from the 1950s to the 1970s. Although some of the earliest published interpretations explicitly acknowledged the influence of the English national historical narrative, greater complexity is now being revealed by recent excavations. The universal anti-Catholicism of early modern Plymouth is nuanced by the find of a large Portuguese pottery assemblage in Castle Street.

The colony of New Sweden in the Delaware Valley (US) and the mythical historical narrative created by seventeenth-century scholarship is the focus of the final chapter in Part III. The idyllic coexistence of the newcomers with the Lenape Indians was later recreated by the Swedish Colonial Society, founded by a new wave of Swedish newcomers in the late nineteenth century. The reconstruction of the Kalmar Nyckel, the ship that brought the first Swedish colonists in 1638, has recently been adopted as a US state symbol. One of the heritage icon types of New Sweden is directly related to archaeology: the more than twenty Swedish forts built along a c. 35-mile stretch of the Delaware River from Salem, New Jersey, to Philadelphia. They are perceived as a tool for the verification and legitimation of New Sweden's identity. Without providing an answer, the author of this chapter, de Curzo, questions why archaeologists wish to find the forts and whether popular perceptions about them are influencing scholars’ decisions. In her view, it would be interesting to understand the historical dynamics of New Sweden to be able to properly engage with this heritage.

Part IV of the volume discusses absences, in particular the failure of nationalist narratives in Turkey and Easter Island. The first case study is dealt with by Dikkaya in Chapter 11. Dikkaya looks at how modern national identity was formed in early twentieth-century Turkey, intentionally silencing the historically important post-medieval period. The view of the Ottoman period as too Oriental to be civilised, and therefore not an example for the modernisation of the Turkish nation-state, hindered the development of post-medieval archaeology, which only emerged timidly in the late 1990s. The last chapter of the book, written by Schávelzon and Igareta, focuses on the destruction of identity on Easter Island. They explain that the last moai to be erected in the island was in the seventeenth century, possibly c. 1650. Soon after, in around 1680, the whole cultural system collapsed in a crisis marked by changes in the diet and the choice of places for ceremonial use, which were no longer public open spaces, but caves and overhangs. Post-contact sites and material culture have only recently attracted archaeologists’ attention. Historical sources are therefore needed to understand the nineteenth-century genocide of the local population. The authors claim that archaeology of the post-contact period is needed to assist in a positive evolution of Rapa Nui's identity.

Some commonalities are shared by many of the chapters in the book. Most of them complain about the late emergence of historical archaeology and, although some of the authors claim political reasons for this, it would also be possible to argue that this lateness responds in fact more to the dynamics within academic archaeology than to any specific regime. Another characteristic found in many of the chapters is the huge dependency of the discussion on history, with a relatively small proportion of examples drawn directly from archaeology, and this is regrettable given the novelty of the theme treated in the book. In a way, the selection of areas in the world dealt with reflects the origin of the book in a session held in Quebec. There is an emphasis on Europe and North America, with large areas of the world having unfortunately been omitted. Despite these shortcomings, the publication of this edited volume fills a gap in the literature on the relationship between nationalism and archaeology in the modern period.