433 Reviews and more extensively in Sicily, but eventually also affected the steppes. Trade stations were established along the rivers but also along land routes, which must have played an equally important role. We are largely left in the dark on the nature and quantities of the goods that circulated. We are hardly better informed about Sicily than about the steppes. Written sources shed some light on the question for both regions, but we are left with the archaeology to solve the question. Publication of data is regretfully only partial for both regions, and quantification as a result is absent or tentative at least. Bezrukov’s important contribution here is his being specific about the amount and nature of objects found, an exercise not achievable for de Angelis given the extent of the data for Sicily. Future research should, however, aim at doing this, as it will provide important clues, even if only on relative proportions rather than absolute ones. Independently from each other, both de Angelis and Bezrukov conclude that the basis of the regional economy in Sicily and the steppes was laid in the Archaic period. The Finley-esque approach adopted by both scholars achieves the highlighting of the importance of economic processes within political and social transformations. A huge factor in these economic processes was trade. Even if not monetised, trade activity was not marginal within local economies in which people were largely self- sufficient, but formed the core of the political economy and defined social relations. The impact of connectivity on societies in the West and the East was therefore enormous and this observation questions the all-too-easy easy conclusions drawn by some Global Historians. It has been claimed that the earliest forms of globalisation in World History were not true globalisations, because the connectivity was limited to a single region (the Mediterranean) and was based on the limited circulation of a small number of objects that had no impact whatsoever on societies. Nor did the earliest globalisation create a ‘global’ mindset. The conclusions drawn by both authors of the books discussed here clearly show that the degree of connectivity in the Ancient World has been underestimated and undervalued. The predecessors of the networks that came to be known as the Northern Branch of the Silk Road were firmly established in the late Archaic-Classical periods and interactions only intensified through time. East was connected to West and this had consequences that resonate in World History. Urbanisation rose throughout the Ancient World as a direct result of the mobility of people and objects. The mass consumption of goods led to ‘global’ attitudes, e.g. the consumption of wine was recognised from Spain to the Eurasian steppes and similar vessels were used for its consumption. The many religious syncretisms are another indication of globalisation. The Hyperboreans, probably a Greek version of a Skythian myth, informed cult activities on Delos. Globalisation in the Ancient World also meant that someone like Herodotus knew about the Urals and the tyrants in Syracuse and many other places, largely without even having been there. The world is a village, in the past as it is today. Lieve Donnellan Amsterdam Free University lieve.donnellan@gmail.com Donald C. Haggis and Carla M. Antonaccio (eds). Classical Archaeology in Context: Theory and Practice in Excavation in the Greek World. pp. xiv+426, b/w illustrations. 2015. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-1-934078-46-4; e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1- 934078-47-1; e-ISBN (ePub) 978-1-61451998- 0; hardcover, paperback £123.99. This volume is a collective, multi-regional, multi- period, and multi-disciplinary reflexion on what is and what should be classical archaeology. The 13 contributions collected are organised in four chapters, respectively paying attention to ‘historical contexts and intellectual traditions’, ‘mortuary’, ‘urban and rural’, and ‘sanctuary contexts’. The study cases presented come from Crete (Praisos, Azoria, and Arkalochori), Rhodes (Kymissaleis), Lycia (Çaltılar Höyük), Macedonia (Platania, Kompoloi, Douvari, Krania, and Vergina), the Peloponnese (Argos, Elis, Megalopolis and the island of Poros), Attica (Athens, Vourva, Marathon), and Sicily (Morgantina). The papers consider archaeological contexts dated from the Geometric to the Hellenistic period. A wide range of archaeological specializations, such as ceramology or bioarcheology (paleobotany, archeozoology, physical anthropology), and technologies (photogrammetry, interrelational database, tomography, geophysical survey, INAA, petrography, pXRF), is represented and discussed by the different contributors. In their introduction, the editors, Haggis and Antonacio, highlight the problem in defining Greek archaeology – a sub-discipline of classical archaeology – as a coherent discipline with ‘a unified intellectual mission or even a reasonably