in representations, in burials, in the remains of food preparation, cooking and consumption, in hands holding tools, in joint efforts of many individual bodies who built architecture and monuments. This collection of papers is a reaction to decades of the body's invisibility. It raises the body as the central topic in the study of past societies, researching its appearance in a wide variety of regional contexts and across vast spans of archaeological time. Contributions in this volume range from the deep Epi-Palaeolithic past of the Near East, through the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, Classical Greece and Late Medieval England, to pre-Columbian Central America, post-contact North America, and the most recent conflicts in the Balkans. In all these case studies, the materiality of the body is centre stage. Possibilities are highlighted for future study: by putting the body at the forefront of these archaeological studies an attempt is made to provoke the imagination and map out new territories.