Arguing that such altered experiences have provided the background to religious beliefs and some artistic creativity throughout human history, they focus their attention on the Neolithic, or "New Stone Age" period, when across Europe, communities abandoned their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles and settled to become sedentary agriculturalists.

The authors argue that these monuments illustrate the influence of altered states of consciousness in constructing cosmological views of a tiered universe, in doing so drawing ethnographic parallels with shamanistic cultures in Siberia and Amazonia.

This leads to a discussion of some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the Neolithic, at Nevalı Çori and Göbekli Tepe, both in Southeastern Turkey, referring to the theory that the ritual beliefs practiced here resulted in the development of agriculture.

[3] Chapter three, "Seeing and Building a Cosmos", proceeds to discuss early humanity's conceptions of cosmology, which the authors argue was probably divided into several tiered realms through which shamans were believed to traverse while in an altered state of consciousness.

[4] Chapter four, "Close Encounters with a Built Cosmos", examines two Neolithic settlements in the Near East – 'Ain Ghazal and Çatalhöyük – and argues that their layout and design may have reflected shamanistic conceptions of cosmology.

Opening with a reference to William Blake, the authors focus their attention on two Early Neolithic tombs on the island of Anglesey off the Welsh coast: Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres.

[9] In the penultimate chapter, "Religion de Profundis", the authors examine a number of recurring features in Neolithic Western Europe which they believe can shed light on the religious beliefs of the period.

However, she also felt that there was a disconnection between the theoretical underpinnings to the tome and the analyses that followed; noting that while they were trying to avoid the neurological determinism which had been critiqued by Paul Bahn and Patricia Helvenston in their Waking the Trance Fixed (2005), she nevertheless thought their approach similar to it.

Ultimately acknowledging that the analysis on offer do not require the neurological backing that the authors provide, Johnston suggested that the contemporary preoccupation with rooting archaeological interpretations in "biological reality" was a part of the "21st-century mind".

Moving on to discuss the authors' views on the relationship between altered states of consciousness and power elites, he expresses his disagreement with them, noting that "the issues of domestication and the emergence of socioeconomic complexity are poorly served by cognitively based explanations.