138 Reviews A major inluence on several papers is the anthro- pologist Alfred Gell, whose posthumously published Art and Agency (1998) is frequently referenced, and from whose earlier writings (1992) the ‘Technologies of Enchantment’ project takes its name. Gell’s principal concern was with the ways in which art objects shape relationships between people, while their speciic content (or meaning) was largely irrelevant to his approach. Gone then, is the ‘con- noisseurship’ of earlier studies. Several contributions use Gell’s ideas as a springboard, notably Gosden and Hill, with their proposal to shit the focus from the meaning of Celtic art to its social and sensory efects, and Giles who stresses the ways in which complex and beguiling deco- ration was integral to the eicacy of objects in mediating relationships between people. It is interesting, however, that other contributors either ignore or disparage Gell’s approach, and this is by no stretch of the imagination a volume with a single theoretical approach. Indeed, the difering approaches of the various authors oten combine quite efectively. For example, according to Joy in his careful formal analysis, the decora- tion on the Old Warden mirror derives its efect from its adherence to a set of sophisticated design rules; yet its decoration has essentially no meaning beyond its general evocation of ‘mirrorness’. For Spratling, the same object shows a semi-abstracted image of a bird, eggs and ledg- lings in a nest, and carries a symbolism associated with gestation, birth and early childhood; appropriate, in his view, to the high-status female owners of such objects. Giles, writing of Iron Age mirrors more generally, draws atention to the performative aspects of their use; the way their weight, when hung from a belt, would afect the gait of the carrier, and their probable use in divination or communication with the otherworld. These contributors might not necessarily agree on issues either of methodol- ogy or meaning, but the combined efect of these multiple readings enriches our understanding nonetheless. Else- where there are innumerable other insights. Spratling, for example, convincingly argues that most Celtic art, however lashy, really needed to be handled or worn to be truly appreciated in all its intricacy and detail. The audience for this art was, in other words, deliberately restricted, its meanings ambiguous and private. In a book containing so many exciting ideas, one will always ind something to disagree with. Gosden and Hill’s suggestion that indigenous communities in Britain were part of the ‘genesis’ of European Celtic art, for example, may push things a litle too far (and is contradicted elsewhere in the volume by the Megaws). Similarly, their idea that prety much anyone in Iron Age society would be capable of manufacturing terrets and other simple items probably rather underestimates the complexity of the processes involved. But there are far more hits than misses and this is a highly stimulating and timely volume, marking a new approach to European Iron Age (not just ‘Celtic’!) art. It more than whets the appetite for the further publications planned from the ‘Technologies of Enchantment’ project and will go some way to helping Celtic art reclaim its rightful place at the centre of Iron Age archaeology. Ian Armit Division of Archaeological, Geographical and Environmental Sciences (AGES) University of Bradford Bradford BD7 1DP UK Email: I.Armit@bradford.ac.uk References Gell, A., 1992. The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology, in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, eds. J. Coote & A. Shelton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 40–66. Gell, A., 1998. Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jope, M., 2000. Early Celtic Art in the British Isles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacDonald, P., 2007. Perspectives on insular La Tène art, in The Later Iron Age in Britain and Beyond, eds. C. Haselgrove & T. Moore. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 328–38. MacGregor, M., 1976. Early Celtic Art in North Britain. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest, edited by Deborah L. Nichols & Patricia L. Crown, 2008. Tucson (AZ): The University of Arizona Press; ISBN 978-0-8165-2621-5 hardback £42 & US$60; vi+273 pp., b&w pls., 24 igs., 9 tables Christopher J. Knüsel This volume, which grew out of a symposium organized by the editors for the Archaeology Division of the Society for American Archaeology in 2001, addresses the evidence for social violence in an area that has become a test case for such behaviours, the prehistoric American Southwest. The editors note that the topic engendered such strong feelings at that time that some of the contributors, who had previously interpreted evidence for social violence in the form of cannibalism in the region, were unwilling to make public pronouncements on the topic as it emerged from the domain of academic discourse to occupy centre-stage in controversial popular media presentations. This reac- tion demonstrates how strongly the past is enmeshed in present concerns, where image, as opposed to substance and comprehension, plays an increasing role in public afairs. Despite these omissions, the book contains a good range of scholars and scholarly traditions that address ethnographic, ethnohistoric, historic, archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence for social violence. In their excellent review of the historical background to archaeological investigation in the American Southwest and its representation in popular media, McGuire and Van Dyke note that cannibalism continues to be seen as part of a deinition of the ‘primitive’, and it is this association CAJ 20:1, 138–41 © 2010 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research doi:10.1017/S0959774310000144