Possibly a useful addition to the scholarly canon -- but I'm not a scholar, only an interested layman. I wanted very much to read a coherent account of Mediterranean prehistory, and that's not what this book provides.
At times, the book is as much a literary and social critique of recent trends in archaeology as it is a discussion of the actual Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of the region. The organization (chapters on specific topics such as agriculture, cult, and lithic technologies, each by a different author) provides neither a long view of the entire region across the entire period, nor an in-depth view of specific cultures or sites. Sites and finds are mentioned often, but in haphazard ways: Nobody, least of all the editors, felt it necessary to connect the dots.
The authors occasionally indulge in bizarre postmodernisms, such as this assertion (from Chapter 2, "Substances in Motion: Neolithic Mediterranean 'Trade'," by John E. Robb and R. Helen Farr): "Especially in seafaring, where decisions must constantly be updated due to changing conditions, knowledge and skill can be seen as socially constructed and influenced." It's unclear to me, in the first place, how seafaring knowledge and skill would be any more "socially constructed" (whatever that means) than any other form of knowledge and skill -- pottery-making, for instance. Beyond that, this sentence seems to be hinting that when faced with an impending storm, the captain of a ship would be more concerned with the opinion of his crew as to the proper course of action than with actually getting the ship safe to harbor. Or something of the sort. Actually, it's not at all clear what the authors meant -- and the book is liberally sprinkled with such gems.
In addition, terms that will not be familiar to the casual reader are scattered throughout. If you don't know what "essentialist" or "tholoi" means, you'll quickly find yourself at sea.
In sum, for a reader such as myself, the book is both disappointing and irritating. Expensive, too.
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