Gender and Material Culture sets out to analyse the archaeological evidence of female religious, primarily in later medieval England, using a gender framework. Gilchrist uses spatial analysis of the geographical and topographical locations of women's nunneries, of their layout and architecture, and of surviving fragments of their material culture, to conclude that the religious experience of these women was very different from men—not, as traditional scholarship would have it, because these were failed or lesser versions of male monasteries, but rather institutions established to fulfil a different social function.

This is a solid work; the highlight for me was the first chapter, which outlines the development of gender theory in archaeology since the 1980s in astonishingly lucid prose (anything that can make Bourdieu clearer to me is deserving of the accolade 'astonishing'). There are some weaknesses, however. Structurally, it betrays its origins as a doctoral dissertation, and could have used some rearranging and judicious editing. For a book about women, the women themselves do not feature strongly—perhaps because there is so little detail on the activities which they performed. Apart from one brief and intriguing mention of nuns having possibly worked in the fields at harvest time in the fourteenth century, these women recede into the background. At times, too, Gilchrist seems to slip into using the male/female gender binary which she so adamantly rejects in her introduction. Still, this is a good demonstration of the fact that a gendered analysis of material culture is possible and highly informative. ( )