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The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England, by Toby F Martin, 2015. Woodbridge: Boydell Press; ISBN 978-1-84383-993-4 hardback £75.00, $120.00; xvi+338 pp., 42 black-and-white plates, 58 figs., 17 tables

experiences of ‘secrets’ and ‘the sacred’ in chapters 5 and 6 are rather more one-sided and couched explicitly in modern (mainly sociological) terms, as they are intended primarily to form a point of departure for discussing modern museum practice. While no doubt quite deliberate, the difference in approach does give the book a certain unevenness, as well as removing focus from certain aspects which could fruitfully have been explored (such as the ontological ramifications of secrecy and concealment in ancient Egyptian conceptions as interpreted e.g. by Finnestad 1989, which are not easily compatible with the author’s sociological approach). In this sense, applying a modern concept to ancient Egypt in order to compare the result back to modern museum practices (as most notably in chapter 5) appears a weaker method than attempting to let the two worlds encounter each other on more equal terms. But then, of course, the point of the book is precisely for the juxtaposed analyses to become more than the sum of their parts by inviting the reader to think of modern practices through ancient concepts as well as highlighting where traditional approaches have tended towards the opposite, often without knowing it. While a few details could thus be debated, this does little to detract from the fact that the book expertly takes up a task of great importance for modern Egyptology from which, as the author remarks several times, most recent research has shied away. At the same time, the critical engagement with (post)colonialism and historiography, as well as practices of curation and exhibition, will make this book of great interest to a wider archaeological and museological audience. Finally, with its conceptual sophistication this book may be taken as one more sign that the ‘curse’ (in the words of Moreno Garcı́a 2014) of the disciplinary tradition of Egyptology which has stymied reflexive and theoretical approaches to the Egyptian material may be about to be lifted.