evenness among the chapters concerning the amount of information provided about the local culture history, with at least four chapters having no illustration at all of the local ceramics. Thus beginning students will no doubt encounter some difficulties in reading the volume. A noteworthy and lamentable omission is a concluding chapter that summarizes the editors'/authors' current views and/or differences of opinion in light of the evidence presented concerning the important issues so cogently raised in the first chapter-for example, theories of ceramic origins, relationships of ceramics to agriculture and to sedentism, and the significance of early pottery. While the volume synthesizes an enormous range of data and theory concerning ceramic origins, it also highlights how much remains to be learned-for example, considering the earliness of the ceramics in such remote areas as Japan and the southern Sahara, one cannot but suspect that even earlier ceramic manufacture will eventually be documented on the East Asia mainland and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, however, this is an extremely informative collection of articles, both substantively and theoretically, and I recommend it highly as the best currently available guide to current thinking on the topic of the origins and spread to ceramic containers.