Showcasing 12 articles in four parts, Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy emerged from a 2017 interdisciplinary conference, and the editors aimed to represent the diversity of topics that arise when archaeology and philosophy meet. This target is emphatically achieved. Part…
At a time when even the highest-value coin in regular circulation (£2) will sometimes hardly cover the cost of a cup of coffee, it is refreshing to be transported back to an era when coins were generally much higher in…
A Maya Universe in Stone delves deeply into the imagery, inscriptions, and political and social contexts of several ancient Maya carved limestone lintels made in the late 8th century AD, likely in Guatemala’s Department of Peten. Eminent epigrapher and archaeologist…
This solid 459-page work by John Chapman summarises his life-long work in the Balkans and, as he states in the preface, was first conceived as a synthesis of Balkan prehistory but subsequently developed along a specific research path focusing on…
Many researchers dealing with prehistoric and historic rock art tend to remain firmly entrenched within their respective comfort zones. Throughout much of the contemporary world, the application and use of rock art is a fundamental part of society; moreover, it…
Return to the Interactive Past offers a fascinating introduction to some of the key topics surrounding the intersection of video games / interactive media and heritage. This book, a follow-on to the 2017 publication, The Interactive Past, explores the many…
Professor Charles Higham will be a familiar figure to CWA readers. Not only does he write a regular column for the magazine, but he is also a world authority on the archaeology of Southeast Asia. When COVID shut down international…
In the midst of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the famous war reporter Ernie Pyle arrived in the Algerian city of Oran and came across a bizarre situation. Pyle found one French unit…
While many historians drill deeper into their sources and produce more detailed and specialist works, it is excellent to find one of Britain’s best Second World War historians doing the opposite. Blood and Ruins is a vast and encyclopaedic view…
An old German proverb has it that ‘a great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.’ General Field Marshal ‘Bloody Ferdinand’ Schörner, commander of Army Group…
Fabrizio Bagatti has made a major contribution to Lawrence of Arabia studies with the publication of this volume. Until now, we have had only the edited selection of his military dispatches published by Malcolm Brown or the facsimile reprint of…
I am always perplexed by political commentators who suggest that the possibility of Northern Ireland being reunited with Éire or Scotland becoming independent as a result of Brexit puts us in ‘uncharted waters’, and that the Union has never faced…
In his introduction to this exceptionally worthwhile volume, Stephen Robinson describes how, during the Gulf War, General Tommy Franks, a true believer in what had become the US Army’s dominant doctrine of ‘manoeuvre warfare’, formulated what historian Thomas Ricks referred to as ‘perhaps the worst war plan in American history’.
London Clay is an impressionistic survey of London and its history, filtered through the prism of the underlying geological strata. It is at once personal and overarching, meandering from pre-Roman to Victorian, south London to north, via what Chivers (a…
Is there room for another general history of early medieval Britain? The answer is ‘yes, of course’ when it is as fresh and interesting as this one. Its USP is that it examines the history of the different peoples of…
Cornwall is a county with a long military history, and reminders of its past can be found scattered across the landscape, ranging from Iron Age hillforts to Cold War control centres. Surrounded by sea on three sides, Cornwall has been…
Associated with the 2019 British Library exhibition Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: art, word, war, these 14 short essays demonstrate the specialised scholarship that lies behind the choice and description of items in such an exhibition. The contents of each closely focused chapter…
The rapid suburban expansion of Inverness in recent decades has led to a patchwork of prehistoric sites being discovered through developer-funded excavations. In 2005, however, Headland Archaeology hit the motherlode at Culduthel. They had discovered a multi-period prehistoric site whose…
Spanning roughly 1,100 years, this lively book is billed as ‘a romp across continents and kingdoms’, and it does not disappoint. Historian Eleanor Janega unpicks complex topics with verve, irreverent humour, and a scattering of pop-culture references, all accompanied by…
The Eurasian Steppe: People, Movement, Ideas is an ambitious scholarly volume tracing the origins of the European identity in the Eurasian steppe, the vast expanse of land that stretches from Hungary through to the Ural Mountains and China. Covering a…
Ancient Mesopotamian literature, written in cuneiform from around 3000 BC, is haunted by omens and ghosts. Most of the sources on ghosts come from the 1st millennium BC, written in Akkadian, but some texts and ideas hark back to even…
Some time in the 8th century BC, with the Greek alphabet just decades old, two monumental poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, were committed to writing and so became the first great works of Western literature. We call their author Homer,…
The earliest recorded find from Piercebridge, the Roman crossing over the River Tees, was a stash of silver coins found in 1792. It was a hint of what would subsequently emerge when two divers, Rolfe Mitchinson and Bob Middlemass, began…
Over the past 50 years or so, archaeologists have managed to hone their focus on several areas of Europe that show clear advances in social and ritual development: areas such as the Gulf of Morbihan in Brittany, the Newgrange complex…
To any well-read person, mention of Bath conjures up a Regency vision of elite spa bathing which makes it hard to think of the place as the abode of poverty or of industry. It is worth remembering that the eponymous…
It is always stimulating to be reminded how much more remains to be said about Hadrian’s Wall, a Roman frontier system that is often believed – from an archaeological perspective – to have been ‘done’. Despite centuries of scholarly scrutiny,…
Ireland has been very well served in recent years by modern scholarship on her medieval castellated landscape. This book by O’Keeffe takes this research much further, especially in the way he rightly sets the castles within their greater European context.…
‘Helicopters flew in, and prices flew up.’ James Miller’s summary of the Chatsworth attic sale of 2010 sets the tone for much of Country House Collections, a fascinating series of meditations on the fate of the art-objects and artefacts that…
Back in the days when I was an undergraduate, I was introduced to the mystical world of social theory. My tutors – Christopher Tilley and, later, Michael Shanks – introduced me to an obscure branch of archaeology that I had…
For thousands of years, people have lived on the 1,000-mile span of mountains stretching, high and low, from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, or in the numerous mountain valleys that delineate the Caucasus – an area where Asia…
This well-written book tells the remarkable story of an extraordinary team of aviators and their support personnel, from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities, who – to quote from the book’s sub-title – turned the tide of the RAF’s…
The final phase of the South African War of 1899-1902, in which Boer guerrillas were eventually overcome by British forces, has been extensively studied by historians. The concentration camps, in which an estimated 27,000 civilians died as part of a…
•Total War: a people’s history of the Second World War
• Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at war 1895-1945
• A Dangerous Enterprise: secret war at sea
• A Brave and Cunning Prince: the great chief Opechancanough and the war for America
• Bomber Command: men, machines, and missions, 1936-68
• Ancient Rome: infographics
The passage of time reveals two things – the forgetfulness of human memory, and the clarity of hindsight – neither of which of course is a law. For the archaeology of modern conflict, in this case the First World War,…
‘General Erwin Rommel has had a very busy weekend.’ So begins Martin Dugard’s latest book, Taking Paris. And immediately the reader knows two things. Firstly, the book does not only describe the August 1944 campaign for the French capital. Originally…
What can six battles across a thousand years of history tell us about the nature of warfare? Probably not a lot, as Allan Mallinson himself admits. In his latest book, he is not so much out to make a point…