Maternal Materialities: Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth, ed. Costanza Gislon Dopfel. Generation: Bodies and Gender in History, 2. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023, 370 pp., 76 color ill.

Maternal Materialities brings together a collection of twenty essays that range widely in era, in geographic coverage, and in methodological approach. The authors too range from a variety of countries and language backgrounds, but the editorial choice to present the entire volume in English (with the translation of three of the chapters from Italian) makes this work at times an introduction of European scholarship into the Anglophone world, though Anglophone scholars have also contributed to this volume. The organization of essays into six thematic parts also creates connections, albeit some less tightly-knit than others, between potentially disparate parts into an ensemble that will be of great interest to scholars of the topic of childbirth. While not all of the essays are of medieval focus, as the title notes, there is much in this excellent volume that will interest medievalists.