'Detailing the establishment, occupation, brutal destruction, and subsequent recreation of a nationally important heritage site, Morgan Pitelka invites us to join the 'dance of agency' at Ichijodani, seat of the powerful Asakura clan. Through detailed and painstaking reconstruction of the quotidian experiences of this provincial city, Pitelka eloquently demonstrates how investigations here both defined medieval archaeology in Japan, and demand a fundamental re-evaluation of the dominant historical narratives around the unification of Japan in the late sixteenth century.' Simon Kaner, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and the University of East Anglia