The organising entity is the Fondazione Paestum, which has a focus on comparative studies of colonial activity in the Mediterranean. The conference was just one of a series of extraordinary events and refurbishments that have taken place at Paestum recently; a second conference has just been published and a third is in preparation. The conferences are aligned with another major event at Paestum, and one of Italy's most important cultural tourism events, the Borsa Mediterranea del Turismo Archeologico (an international trade show for the travel and tourism industry). Paestum, a colony itself both in the sense of a Greek foundation, and then a Roman resettlement, is well suited therefore to host discussions that touch on mobility, hybridity and the interpenetration of culture as visible in the material record.

Whereas Sarr and Savoy (2018) focus on artefacts taken from various African countries after 1885, Incidental archaeologists, considers “the first four decades of the French conquest and pacification of Algeria under the authority of the French military Government General” (p. 24). Throughout the volume, Effros presents a convincing argument in which the social history of military infrastructure lays the groundwork for the future of the French civilising mission. She is clear about the magnitude of the task that the book is engaged in; it provides links between early French archaeologists and epigraphers and their place within the development of the disciplines. It also considers the ways by which romanticised narratives, created by French officers, about the classical archaeology of Algeria led to irresponsible destruction of antiquity, violence against local resistant populations and classifications that became constitutive of colonial archaeological interest and practice.