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In 1997, archaeologist Fennell (Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was asked to investigate an abandoned 18th-century house on a newly purchased property near Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Might the place be historically significant? Fennell's shovel test pits inside the ruins turned up a tiny clay model of a human skull incised with an X holding letters within its interstices. So begins the compelling detective story in this readable little book that is thick with engaging detail and rich in bibliography. Was the skull a conjuring device of an enslaved African American who worked on the property? In particular, might the X-shape be a potent "crossroads" symbol or a "cosmogram" associated with central African religion? Or could it be a manifestation of magical practices called "hexerei," derived from German American folk religion as practiced by the house's owners? As he pursues such questions, Fennell turns to historical archaeology and folklore studies as well as local archives and other historical sources. The author's innovation, though, is his proposition of a processual social model that he calls "ethnogenic bricolage," which combines cultural continuities with invention and the melange of artifacts from cultures merging in the Americas. Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries. A. F. Roberts University of California, Los Angeles