REVIEW BY KATE GILES Do secret tunnels connect the ruins of ancient castles, churches, and lost monasteries across England? Are spiral staircases designed to favour the right-handed defenders of castles against disadvantaged attackers? And what about the strange burn marks…
REVIEW BY JONATHAN FINCH Corinne Fowler’s first book, Green Unpleasant Land (2020), explored the connections between England’s colonial histories and the rural landscape, sparking a backlash from those for whom the image of rural England is at the core of…
REVIEW BY ROB IXER This is a book for stone circle fans. After a brief but succinct account of prehistoric stone circle-building, the stones are described starting at the geographical (and perhaps interest-wise) top in Orkney, around the Ness of…
REVIEW BY ROGER FORSHAW This Golden House Publication is a meticulous study of a distinct wall scene found in numerous private tombs, particularly during the New Kingdom. Kelly-Anne Diamond refers to it as ‘the Sacred District’, a map-like illustration depicting…
REVIEW BY SG The Oxbow Classics in Egyptology series is steadily building into a large library of facsimile volumes covering a wide range of topics (including reissues of typological catalogues by W M Flinders Petrie, as reviewed in AE 139),…
REVIEW BY SG This second Oxbow Classics facsimile explores the history of domestication and the role of agriculture in the social economy, based on what was current evidence when it was first published in 1994, before presenting a comprehensive catalogue…
REVIEW BY ANNA GARNETT For those undertaking formal or informal study of Egyptian archaeology, a number of key textbooks focusing on the social lives of the ancient Egyptian people will always be on the reading list – Barry Kemp’s seminal…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS This is the second of the author’s planned trilogy on the last of Egypt’s dynasties (The Ptolemies: Rise of a Dynasty, the first of the series, was reviewed in AE 138). John D Grainger is a…
REVIEW BY GERALD PONTING The subtitle of this book is ‘A Guide to the Standing Stones’, but it is not a conventional guide-book. A detailed and considered tour of each part of Calanais – centre stone; circle; chambered cairn; east,…
REVIEW BY RP Unlike other books from the 50 Finds series, Kayt Hawkins’ volume explores objects that are grouped not by geographical location or chronological period, but instead collected as an assemblage under the broad theme of ‘childhood’. The majority…
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH I have always thought that, for many archaeological projects, the process of data-gathering and reporting on previous archaeological activity is as important as the archaeology itself; the investigative activity at Rushen Abbey, including more than 100…
REVIEW BY JIM LEARY Jack Cornish is Head of Paths at the British walking charity Ramblers and, like me, an advocate of old and lost paths, the overgrown and the abandoned. The Lost Paths charts some of Cornish’s journeys along…
REVIEW BY TIMOTHY DARVILL Archaeology is not just concerned with learning about the past – it is also about using our hard-won understandings to help inform the present and shape the future. Nowhere is this more urgent than with reference…
REVIEW BY NICHOLAS EVANS This reprint of the updated 2014 edition of Dr Foster’s accessible multidisciplinary study is very welcome. Originating in a 1996 publication by Batsford for Historic Scotland, the 2014 edition was substantially altered to take into account…
REVIEW BY JONATHAN VALK Assyria stands out in history as the fountainhead of empire. It was perhaps the first state to subdue the bulk of its world, extending in every direction until its frontiers consisted almost entirely of sand, sea,…
REVIEW BY SIMON NORTON Ten years ago, Year 3 primary school teachers in the UK, like myself, were handed a revised National Curriculum which included a brand-new Unit of Study on ‘Prehistoric Britain’. For many teachers of seven-year-olds, this was…
REVIEW BY DENNIS B BLANTON This new book from William Kelso is in the tradition of popularised portrayals of archaeological discoveries linked to the ‘Virginia adventure’. Beginning in the 1960s, Ivor Noël Hume published several evocative, book-length accounts of studies…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles
REVIEW BY JONATHAN EATON Sir Max Hastings has an established reputation as a leading writer on 20th-century conflicts, drawing on his previous experience as both a war correspondent and newspaper editor. His recent works have included studies of Vietnam and…
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD The Second World War saw the parachute and glider used to deploy troops in large numbers for the first and last time in military history. The technology had simply not been available in the Great War,…
REVIEW BY PATRICK MERCER Stand on any part of the battlefield of Passchendaele and you will be struck by how unremarkable it looks. Gentle slopes are topped by woods, while hedges, villages, and small towns pepper the area, which is…
REVIEW BY NICK HEWITT Sometimes books teach us something new, but sometimes they inspire us to reconsider something that we thought we understood. Historian and archaeologist Stephen Fisher’s excellent debut work Sword Beach falls in the latter category. The number…
REVIEW BY MATTHEW CHAMPION It is no surprise that any study of early English stone churches should focus on the county of Norfolk. With in excess of 650 medieval churches surviving to this day, the county is a microcosm of…
REVIEW BY PAUL KITCHING This monograph presents the results of archaeological investigations undertaken as part of the Heritage-at-Risk strand of the Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project (WallCAP), with fieldwork focused on understanding and mitigating the threats to the monument, both…
REVIEW BY MATTHEW SYMONDS Vindolanda is a marvel. It lies to the south of Hadrian’s Wall, and boasts a series of superimposed Roman forts and associated structures. The Vindolanda Trust has been investigating them for over 50 years, with this…
REVIEW BY MARY DEEVY Viking Dublin was absolutely crawling! It is a rich treasure trove for an archaeoentomologist like Eileen Reilly, who examined 12,895 of its tiny inhabitants from 100 samples taken from 13 phases of habitation at Fishamble Street.…
REVIEW BY JOHN REID The attraction of ancient Rome is as potent today as it has ever been – just turn on your TV or look at any popular history bookstand – and how can we resist such an alluring…
REVIEW BY CH ‘Linn gu linn, bho ainm gu ainm – “from one generation to the next, from one name to another” – people make this story what it is.’ So writes Alistair Moffat in the introduction to this energetic…
REVIEW BY CAMPBELL PRICE This is perhaps the most closely related set of papers to be included in a single Festschrift that I’ve ever encountered. Given Nicholas Reeves’ well-known work in the Valley of the Kings, and on Tutankhamun in…
REVIEW BY HILARY FORREST This is a most unusual book – bound in an antique Chinese fashion originating from the Ming period, with pages tied together between boards with string. The content, however, relates not to China, but to mainstream…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS Finally! An in-depth biography of not just one, but seven Ptolemaic queens named Cleopatra – and a few more besides. There is a plethora of books focusing on the most famous of these queens, Cleopatra VII,…
REVIEW BY ROGER FORSHAW Frank Holt’s very readable account of Ankh-Hap, a Ptolemaic-era mummy appropriated in the 19th century from a tomb in Egypt, is a unique, informative, and fascinating contribution to the study of ancient Egyptian mummified remains. The…
REVIEW BY MICHAEL TUNNICLIFFE Ancient Kellis was a site in the Dakhla Oasis that was occupied from Late Ptolemaic times to the end of the 4th century AD. Excavations have exposed houses, cemeteries, temples, and churches. Important documents were found…
REVIEW BY SARAH GRIFFITHS In his 2014 book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (reviewed in AE 85) Eric Cline charted the ‘perfect storm of calamities’ that led to the sudden collapse of the thriving interconnected Bronze Age civilisations. In…
REVIEW BY ANNE MITCHELL Alice Albinia spent some weeks at the Ness of Brodgar in 2017, and she writes of her time there as part of her Orkney experience in the opening chapter of The Britannias: an island quest. It…
REVIEW BY JULIA BEST This engaging volume explores human interactions with birds from the end of the last Ice Age to around 1650 AD. An expert in avian zooarchaeology and the social meaning of birds, Serjeantson balances a data-rich exploration…