Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS Prehistory and Protohistory primary focus is the technology of human modification. The book employs descriptive and quantitative approaches and is richly documented New Light on Palaeolithic and Mesolithic with tables, diagrams and three appendices. The Ornament finds are illustrated by informative high-resolution colour photographs. The book operates on multiple levels. It Catherine Perlès. Ornaments and other complements the other, more eminent categories of ambiguous artifacts from Franchthi, archaeological evidence recovered from Franchthi, Volume I, the Palaeolithic and the the bread and butter of a prehistoric site’s inventory Mesolithic, excavations at Franchthi Cave, such as the lithic finds, the pottery and the figurines, Greece, Fascicle 15. pp. xx+ 322, b/w/ that have already seen publication in previous years colour illustrations. 2018. Bloomigdon: or decades. It thus presents a more complete picture Indiana University Press. ISBN 978–0– of the full gamut of material remains left behind 25303184–6 hard/paperback £43. by the Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic groups who lived in the cave. At the same time, it complements the 1989 volume authored by Judith Shackleton Under the modest heading of a fascicle, the 15th on Marine Molluscan Remains, with its distinctive volume of the Excavations at Franchthi Cave palaeoenvironmental and economic focus. Perlès publication series is entitled Ornaments and Other has been inspired by this early work and her fine Ambiguous Artifacts from Franchthi and is authored observations, shifting her attention to shells as by Catherine Perlès. Unlike her previous studies ornamentation elements and windows to the origins of the knapped stone artifacts that were delivered of human technology and spiritual life. If one were in French, this work is written in English and will to question the necessity of another volume on this be valuable to a wide audience of specialists and material, a perusal of the new book’s content and a students. The work at hand is one more welcome read of Perlès’s research questions leave no doubt addition to the impressive series published by as to its scope. The book exemplifies the ability of Indiana University Press, which is unparalleled in a category of archaeological finds to offer multiple the archaeological literature of Stone Age Greece alternative readings and interpretations, that and southeast Europe in terms of quantity, quality connect the current theoretical and methodological and detail of publication. Thanks are due to the wise advances in the subject once they set off from new ‘Franchthi board’ who carry on the legacy of the site points of departure. Very much like the raw materials and its excavation in the 21st century (and perhaps in the hands of different chefs can be turned into to the excavator Tom Jacobsen who sends his jazzy either a Michelin-star dish or a dull execution of an blessings from the sky). old recipe, what we have here is a first-class piece of analytical work and synthesis departing from a The book consists of fourteen chapters and an clearly articulated set of questions. epilogue and is structured in two main sections that stand independently and deal with the shell On another level of operation, the book will be and other ornaments and ornamental species of immediately read by two scientific communities: the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic period respectively. prehistorians and those working on molluscan Each section contains chapters on individual remains. I would argue that the methodological species turned into beads, namely Cyclope sp., Antalis impact and interpretative repercussions will sp. (the Tusk shell) and Columbella rustica (the Dove certainly go far beyond the two. With this study shell), a chapter on rare ornament types, a chapter the author confirms the potential of material from on diachronic variations and a closing comparison excavations half a century old to contribute to the and discussion chapter. The book’s content is larger historical and anthropological discussions wisely balanced between theory and data, between of the present, once approached with a robust and laboratory archaeology and fieldwork in the wider solid methodology. environs of the cave to gather modern comparative collections of shells. In its pages one can see the A third level of operation has to do with the very archaeologist’s successful effort to describe the nature of the Franchthi Cave sequence, which from specimens as cultural entities (artifacts) and as the onset of the excavations was hailed as exceptional biological entities (raw materials). The work on for allowing a deep – though not uninterrupted – sourcing the molluscs transformed into artifacts view to the Stone Age world of Greece. Perlès’s work is indeed a positive element of the study, whose on the ornaments, like her three-volume work on 423 JOURNAL OF GREEK ARCHAEOLOGY knapped stone lithics which provided a basis for Anastasia Papathanasiou, William A. phasing the sequence, opens a window to long-term Parkinson, Daniel J. Pullen, Michael ornamental history and invites us to envision the L. Galaty and Panagiotis Karkanas individuals and the societies who made, wore and (eds). Neolithic Alepotrypa cave in discarded them. The sheer amount of finds and the Mani, Greece. In honor of George the differing nature of the evidence lie behind its Papathanassopoulos. pp. 435, colour publication in two volumes: Volume 1 (considered plates. 2018. Oxford and Philadelphia: here) presents the Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic Oxbow Books. ISBN 978–1–78750–648–6 assemblages and Volume 2 (to follow) shall be hardback £70. presenting the more diverse (in terms of materials and type) Neolithic assemblage of ornaments. Perlès marries many different worlds. She is loyal to the Since the occupation of caves became recognised French tradition of theoretically informed, meticulous as a specific feature of the Late and Final Neolithic 1 work on the empirical record and at the same time in Greece, widely differing interpretations have she is an intelligent and daring analyst of an ‘Anglo- been offered. Schematically, the balance shifted Saxon calibre’. She delivers here a comprehensive from a purely pragmatic interpretation – caves account of a collection of more than 12,000 specimens, were used as domestic places in the context of perforated beads and pendants and other artifacts increasing pastoralism – to a mostly or purely ritual 2 such as perforated pebbles, without making it a chore. interpretation. However, as illustrated by a recent 3 She is an insider of the chaîne opératoire approach publication devoted to the use of caves, the question with its emphasis on the biography of each object, is far from settled. Yet, to better understand the status from raw material procurement to manufacture, of LN/FN caves, or, more precisely, to better grasp use and discarding as a token of technology, while how difficult it is to understand it, a key element was treating ornaments as symbolic units, that is, as missing: the detailed publication of Alepotrypa Cave, non-verbal means of communication that operate in the Mani. More than any other cave site, Alepotrypa, in a symbolic sphere. She has a deep knowledge of with its apparently domestic occupations, wealth of 4 anthropological theory, which allows her to turn a human remains and exceptional deposits, epitomises collection of admittedly simple and repetitive objects the impossibility to draw a clear-cut opposition into an exciting reason to cogitate not on cultural between the mundane and the ritual, the polis and the change, archaeologists’ favourite topic, but on cultural necropolis. Paradoxically, Alepotrypa raises not such permanence and the meaning of the transition from much the question of the definition of rituals as the the Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic world. Last but definition of what is domestic. not least, being a lithic specialist herself and having The cave, located just above the Bay of Diros on the published the Franchthi Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Western coast of the Tainaron Peninsula, is about Neolithic assemblages of chipped stone, she has an 300 m long and 50 m wide in maximum width. excellent command of the different perspectives Several distinct chambers are separated by narrow offered by the stone tools and the ornaments from passages; after a deep slope, the largest, deepest both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. and most remote chamber (Chamber L) reveals This book offers a fresh and authoritative study of a large lake of slightly brackish but drinkable 5 the ornaments recovered from the Franchthi Cave water. The cave was sealed by the collapse of the sediments. Perhaps its greatest contribution is porch in the late Final Neolithic, dated by U-Th on that it prompts us to think along the lines of very speleothems that sealed the floor, to ca 3,200 BC long-term regional traditions, on a scale that has (Maighan Boyd and Kathrin Holmgren, Chapter 21). not been comprehended so far despite well-known When speleologists discovered the cave in 1958, evidence for it (parietal art, for instance). This, many intact vases and human remains were still in turn, leads us to question the backbone of the in situ over the floor. Unfortunately, the anterior cultural paleogeography of Europe, to question the proxies used to define past cultural entities and to 1 Renfrew 1972. question the use of stone tool typology to define 2 E.g. Demoule and Perlès 1993, Tomkins 2009. This shift is not chronological and cultural techno-complexes. specific to Greece. See Bergsvik and Skeates 2012 ; Moyes 2012. 3 Mavridis and Tae Jensen 2013. Nena Galanidou 4 There seem be doubts, however, about the provenience of the silver beads, pendants and earrings attributed to Alepotrypa but Affiliation Dept. of History and Archaeology, not published here. University of Crete 5 A section of the cave would have been useful to the reader to [email protected] better comprehend the contrasted topography of the cave and the impressive slope down to the lake.