These two edited volumes reflect the continuing surge of interest in thearchaeology of religious practice and belief. Over the past 20 years,archaeologists have turned their focus on the study of ritual and religion,challenging what Hawkes (1954:162) considered the highest and most difficult to reach rung on his ladderof inference: “religious institutions and spiritual life”. Renewed interestin the archaeology of religion and ritual was largely inspired by Renfrew's (1985) work on the Bronze AgePhylakopi sanctuary on Melos, Greece, a seminal study that continues toguide archaeological interpretation based on the material correlates linkedwith ritual practice. Renfrew's focus on ritual (or ‘cult’) exposed thewidespread perception that religion is archaeologically inaccessible. Therecognition that a Durkheimian division between the sacred and the profaneis less distinct in reality, particularly in small-scale rituals anddomestic contexts, complicates the difficulty archaeologists face in thehazy area between quotidian life and religious praxis. Since Renfrew'spublication of Phylakopi, these problems have been recognised and confrontedin a variety of different volumes and synthetic articles.