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Rock art and ritual: mindscapes of prehistory, by Brian A. Smith and Alan A. Walker

sons remains unexplored by academic archaeologists who rarely, if ever, experience henges at that time of day. But to pick up on specific instances for further research is unfair. This is a collection of papers which demonstrate some of the profound problems of attempting to understand identity across the vast temporal and geographical span of the north European Neolithic. The authors approach the notion of identity from a surprisingly diverse number of starting points – which is in itself a significant contribution. Since the choice of each of these starting points reflects some of the major difficulties in understanding prehistoric identity, it is no failing on the part of the editors that they make little attempt to synthesize the different contributions. The nearest we get is the generalized remark that “different perspectives, necessarily, result in different narratives”. Maybe the problems inherent in conceiving identity are themselves too challenging to project back into prehistory. Maybe there can only be tentative and deeply problematical attempts to understand either personal or social identity in the Neolithic. But at least questions have been asked. And all credit to the contributors for some credible attempts to shed light, from a variety of directions, on these challenges. The megaliths may not have spoken clearly yet – but the next round of interrogations will be less torturous.