The Archaeological Institute of America is pleased to present the 2014 James R. Wiseman Book Award to Bryan Burns for Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity (Cambridge University Press).

Burns' book is an innovative study that will have an impact on Bronze Age and classical archaeology. In one of the first monographic treatments of consumption studies in classical archaeology, Burns combines current archaeological theory with meticulous analysis of particular artifacts and the cultures that produced and circulated them.

Burns confronts how the act of importation, whether of raw materials or finished goods, and the objects themselves were transformed into social power by the Mycenaeans. He also demonstrates that various regions of the Bronze Age mainland had different trajectories in the importation and consumption of foreign items and their subsequent transformation into social power.

For all these reasons, Bryan Burns' Mycenaean Greece, Mediterranean Commerce, and the Formation of Identity is a most worthy recipient of the 2014 James R. Wiseman Book Award.