sites under investigation. Freund has actively sought out the experiences and memories of those who were connected, in one way or another, with the sites investigated during the field research. He has used these accounts together with artefacts and possessions to identify the anonymous victims of the Holocaust. In this way, archaeology can give a voice and iden- tity to the millions of people who died in the Holocaust; the importance of this should not be underestimated. To conclude, despite its limitations, The archaeology of the Holocaust has an important lesson to teach: that history is everywhere, and those who lived and died during the Second World War are part of that history. To use the author’s own words, this book might “inspire people to study their own family’s stories, and look for answers” (p. xiv), and the archaeological methods described in this volume offer the means to do it. Dawid KobiaLka Independent researcher, Poland (✉ dawidkobialka@wp.pl ) Elizabeth A. Lambourn. 2018. Abraham’s luggage: a social life of things in the medieval Indian Ocean world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; hardback 978-1-316-7954-53 £75. Abraham Ben Yiju was a Jew from the Mediterranean port city of al-Mahdiyya in modern Tunisia. In AD 1132 he moved to Manga- lore on the Malabar Coast of southern India, where he spent the next 17 years of his life running an import-export business and a bronze- ware factory. Trade between the Mediterranean and India was by this time over 1000 years old. A well-established network of mari- time emporia and mercantile communities provided a foundation for Ben Yiju’s business ventures. Most of his trade was with Aden and, indirectly, with Cairo, where large and prosperous Jewish com- munities existed. Ben Yiju bought an Indian slave called Bama whom he relied upon to represent him in Aden, and who later moved with him to Cairo as a trusted retainer when he finally left Mangalore in 1149. Ben Yiju also bought, manumitted and married an Indian slave-girl called Ashu, who apparently bore him three children. His daughter, Sitt al-Dar, later married his nephew who had grown up in Sicily. The life and times of Abraham Ben Yiju thus con- stitute a remarkable case study in medieval globalisation. This is ably explored by Elizabeth Lambourn in her new volume. She is able to do so because of the chance survival of the geniza of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo. A geniza is a repository for books and documents that mention the sacred name of God, the casual dis- posal of which is prohibited by Jewish law. That of the Ben Ezra Synagogue contained around 300 000 documents, mostly dating between the tenth and thirteenth centuries AD. Among these are 80 documents concerning Ben Yiju, mostly letters to and from his business partners and family members, spanning the 1130s and 1140s. Lambourn’s study of the possessions Book Reviews © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2020 271