Review by Anna Garnett The past two decades have seen greater recognition that the cultures of Nubia represent the earliest complex societies in inner Africa in their own right: scholars of ancient Nile cultures now more frequently seek to look…
Review by Hilary Forrest Oh no – not another book about Tutankhamun! This one, however, is rather different. The first sections of the book cover the history of the Valley of the Kings, the early desecrations of the tombs, and…
Review by Campbell Price This book is the result of the very recent PhD research of Liverpool University student Katherine Slinger – so recent, in fact, that Dr Slinger graduated after the book was published, which must be some sort…
Review by Sarah Griffiths There are so very few books on female Ptolemaic rulers (with the exception of Cleopatra VII) that I was excited to see a new volume dedicated to two of the lesser-known and yet immensely important Cleopatras…
Review by Rosalind Love The engagingly lyrical writing of Eleanor Parker has gained many admirers through her website ‘A Clerk of Oxford’, which gently introduced readers to the rich literature, folklore, and religion of early medieval England. Her latest book…
Review by Hugh Cheape Professor Ian Bradley has identified a network of routes extending for miles across our upland and island areas and radiating out from long-used burial grounds. The routes are marked by cairns where funerals, carrying the deceased…
Review by Stuart Brookes Falling somewhere between a gazetteer, reference manual, and coffee-table book, it’s a little difficult to figure out who the intended market for this volume might be. Although containing many beautiful photographs, it doesn’t quite qualify as…
Review by James Gerrard This is a handsomely produced and richly illustrated volume detailing the results of the University of Reading’s research excavations at Little London, just to the south-west of the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester; see CA…
Review by Peter Halkon As the cover note states, this is an accessible introduction to the major artefacts and sites within the county. As Adam is a member of the curatorial staff at the Yorkshire Museum in York, the book’s…
Review by KK In the latest addition to the 50 Finds series from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), Laura Burnett, the Finds Liaison Officer for Somerset, takes us on a tour of the county through some of the most important…
Review by Dylan K Rogers To say that the Roman world was overflowing with water is an understatement. Recently, scholarship has increasingly begun to explore the numerous ways water impacted the lives of ancient Romans, from understanding the design of…
Review by Bernadette McCooey Animals as animals is the main premise of this work, as all too often animals are reduced to their economic or social significance, both in the literary and archaeological record. Thankfully, this refreshing approach to early…
Review by Helen Whitehouse Originally published in French (Mosaïques d’Alexandrie: pavements d’Égypte grecque et romaine, 2019), this handsome volume now appears in an excellent English translation by Colin Clement. Excavations in Alexandria, on land and at sea, over the last…
REVIEW by COLIN POMEROY A renowned writer on air combat in World War II, Professor Patrick Eriksson is well known for his detailed research, something he fully demonstrates in this new book, which takes its name from the fighter pilot’s…
REVIEW by MARC DeSANTIS Popular memory of the Second World War is inconsistent. Certain events, such as the Battle of Britain, El Alamein, the Atlantic Campaign, D-Day, and Operation Market Garden, loom large in modern consciousness. Other events and fronts,…
REVIEW by TOBY CLARK During the First World War, a young soldier called Douglas Gillespie used a letter home from the trenches to expound on an idea for remembering the dead after the fighting was over. Gillespie proposed a path…
REVIEW by DAVID FLINTHAM Until relatively recently, there were more terms relating to fortifications than to probably any other area of military history. Confusion is easy, especially since many of the words and phrases come directly from languages other than…
REVIEW by MARC DeSANTIS The death of Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323 BC left the empire he had conquered without blood heirs ready to take up the heavy burden of governance. Thus, in the days following his passing,…
REVIEW: CALUM HENDERSON The new German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which arrived on Netflix last autumn, pulls no punches in its depiction of the savage violence of World War I. In the film,…
Review by Michael Potterton Thirty years ago, when I was a history and archaeology undergraduate at University College Dublin, the phrase ‘Ireland and the Crusades’ seemed almost as absurd as ‘Ireland and the Palaeolithic’ or ‘Ireland and the Renaissance’. Times…
Review by Kathryn Murphy In Facing the Enemy, Andrew Tibbs presents analysis of Roman fortifications and the Scottish landscape, focusing on the positioning, intervisibility, orientation, and interconnectivity of Flavian sites. Stemming from his PhD thesis, this volume discusses one of…
Review by Edward Biddulph Ask most people what comes to mind when they hear the word ‘archaeologist’ and, if not immediately going to Indiana Jones, they will most likely imagine an academic poring over artefacts or heavy tomes, or carefully…
Review by David Flintham From Iron Age hillforts to Second World War pillboxes, fortifications are all around us. Yet there are probably more terms relating to fortifications than anything else in military history. Author Jean-Denis Lepage has challenged himself to…
Review by Jacqueline A Nowakowski A late Neolithic decorated slate disc adorns the front cover of this substantial and well-illustrated publication. Down the Bright Stream presents full technical reports on excavations (2009-2015) in Tregurra Valley by Cornwall Archaeological Unit. Key…
Review by Simon Esmonde Cleary The excavations at Druce Farm in Dorset were carried out by local volunteers between 2012 and 2018, along with geophysical, drone, and laser surveys of the environs. The full publication of the results only four…
Review by Robert Harding The ancient Mauryan Empire and its third emperor Ashoka (c.304-232 BC) represent a striking departure for Colleen Taylor Sen. The author’s reputation rests on her series of food books, most notably Curry: a global history. Nevertheless,…
Review by Diana Bentley The ancient Near East has not always attracted the popular attention it deserves, especially in comparison with other cultures of the surrounding area, like Greece, Rome, and Egypt. This latest work by Amanda H Podany, Professor…
Review by Sarah Griffiths This new exploration of Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s unique vision for Egypt and their rise to divine status is presented in an unusual format, with each chapter headed by a short dramatic reconstruction. Such vignettes are perhaps…
Review: Hilary Forrest Many readers will be familiar with the name Francis Frith, which is associated with the world of picture postcards, often of seaside views or famous sights. What you will discover from this fascinating and detailed work is…
REVIEW: Cathie Bryan Fashion is a neglected subject in reception studies of ancient Egypt, with the exception of the Egyptianising vogue inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb (1922). Campagnol, a teacher of the history of fashion in Milan, goes…
REVIEW: Anna Garnett For many of us, it is the human stories behind major archaeological discoveries that first spark our fascination with Egyptology. Who were the people on the excavation teams? What did they do, and how did they spend…
Review by Finbar McCormick Skellig Michael, a rocky outcrop off the south-west coast of Ireland, boasts the best-surviving early medieval monastery in Ireland, if not western Europe. Ironically, despite the richness of Ireland’s early medieval documentary sources, mentions of the…
Review by Nathalie Cohen This monograph, the result of a project started by David Neal and Warwick Rodwell in 2015 to examine the historic floors in the eastern arm of Canterbury Cathedral, is a stunning achievement. Over nearly 400 pages,…
Review by Joe Flatman I do not disagree with anything that Kalliopi Fouseki says in this book about the management of cultural heritage. As she summarises in its conclusion, ‘heritage as a thing and as a process is a dynamic,…
Review by Andrew Tibbs The importance of Chester in the Roman period cannot be overestimated. Not only was it an important military centre with the establishment of a legionary fortress (Deva) in the 1st century, but the subsequent development of…
Review by Mark Knight There is something of a contradiction between the main title of this publication and the archaeology presented within its pages. The book details and interprets an impressively large-scale, decade-long excavation of a low-lying Bronze Age site…