Luci Attala & Louise Steel. 2019. Body matters: exploring the materiality of the human body. Cardiff: University of Wales Press; 978-1-7868-3415-7 paperback £39.99.

Attalaand Steel’s edited volume addresses the materiality of the human body. Most of the contributors take an explicitly ‘New Materialities’ perspective, and the works of Ingold, Harris, Drazin and Küchler and, especially, Barad are extensively referenced. A new materialities perspective, the editors summarise cogently in their short preface, draws attention to the capacities of materials to shape the character and meaning of a thing, and thus takes the view that things should be understood as, in some sense, agentive. This is not new.The(not quite so) new materiality has been explored by archaeologists for nearly two decades now.What gives this collection its originality is first, that it takes an interdisciplinary approach, and second, that its focus is specificallya less common centreof analysis: the human body. Of course bodies, if they are traditionally understood to overlap closely with persons or selves, tend to be attributed agency anyway. The papers in this volume go further, however, and are explicitly concerned with how the actual matter of bodies, their bones, skin, flesh, shapes and is shaped to the world around them. [Opening paragraph]