Harald Meller, Hans Peter Hahn, Reinhard Jung and Roberto Risch, eds. Arm und Reich — Zur Ressourcenverteilung in prähistorischen Gesellschaften / Rich and Poor — Competing for Resources in Prehistoric Societies. 8. Mitteldeutscher Archäologentag vom 22. bis 24. Oktober 2015 in Halle (Saale) / 8th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany, October 22‒24, 2015 in Halle (Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 14/I‒14/II. Halle: Landesamt für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte, 2016, 651pp., numerous b/w and colour illustr., hbk, ISBN 978-3-944507- 45-3) In the past decade, the museum and research environment around Harald Meller and his team at the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Halle has produced various volumes on intriguing topics, rich in perspectives, case studies, and imagery. The publication of Rich and Poor — Competing for Resources in Prehistoric Societies, co-edited by Meller, Hans Peter Hahn, Reinhard Jung, and Roberto Risch, is no exception. The work, composed of two volumes, publishes the proceedings of the Eighth Archaeological Conference of Central Germany held in 2015. The two volumes contain thirty-three contributions including a Preface by the editors. The chapters are written in English (fourteen) and in German (eight- een). Abstracts are provided in both lan- guages. The contributions are split into three sections dealing with the following broad topics: Theory and Interdisciplinary Approaches (Section 1), Inequality in Pre- and Protohistoric Societies (Section 2), and, finally, Inequality in State Societies (Section 3). The subtitle of the work, Competing for Resources in Prehistoric Societies, is misleading since Section 3 and one contribution in Section 2 (Ch. 19, Birkhan) deal with (proto-)historic societies and written records in Egypt, Rome, and the Middle Ages. This is an important aspect of the publication because these chap- ters add to the long-term perspective and its comparative character (pp. 11‒12, 14). In contrast to other volumes published in the Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle series, this publication seems at times to lack focus. The German subheading speaks of Resourcenverteilung (distribution of resources) while the English title mentions Competing for Resources. There is a significant conceptual difference between the two terms. In the Preface, the editors seem to be more con- cerned with social inequality, which is framed as a problem that is in need of arch- aeological and anthropological study (p. 11). Social inequality has been a staple of archaeological research at least since the mid 1990s (Price & Feinman, 1995). Furthermore, social inequality does not only arise from economic differences―as suggested by the title Rich and Poor. Nonetheless, the aim to address ‘poverty’ and ‘being poor’ makes the volumes note- worthy and timely because this is an area of enquiry that is lacking in archaeology (p. 12), although it should be recognised that it is not entirely new (see contributions on the Iron Age by Trebsche et al., 2007, and on historical archaeology by Orser, 2011). The claim that research on poverty is also missing from social and cultural anthropology seems doubtful considering that entire journals, such as the Journal of Poverty, are dedicated to the topic. Nevertheless, the important issue here is that Rich and Poor offers a broader, long- term perspective, constituting an excellent contribution to European archaeology. Four non-archaeological contributions are present in the volume (Chs 2, 9‒11). While these are generally thought-provoking, Book Reviews 313 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2018.6 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Gothenburg University Library, on 09 May 2018 at 07:32:53, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,