REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND This is a provocative book which will ruffle feathers, perhaps among some MHM readers. But it is also an important one. While the heart of The Great Defiance is historic, presenting an alternative narrative of what is often described as the ‘First’ British Empire, its central…
Review by Andrew Tibbs. Over a decade of excavation has taken place at the Manor Pit quarry site in Baston, Lincolnshire, and this volume details the archaeological work undertaken at the site, and subsequent analysis. Initially occupied in the Neolithic period, it wasn’t until the Bronze Age that pastoral activity…
Review by HB. From traces of Palaeolithic life along the coast to deserted medieval villages and a Cold War airfield, A History of Norfolk in 100 Places is a whistle-stop tour of the county’s most intriguing buildings, archaeological sites, and historic landscapes. Each ‘place’ is assigned its own entry and…
Review by Susan Oosthuizen. This study of 14 south Oxfordshire parishes covers the lowland valleys of both the Thame and Thames, typified by nucleated settlements and open fields, and the uplands of the Chiltern Hills, characterised by dispersed farms and hamlets set among small fields, pastures, and woodland. The first…
Review by Peter Halkon. Chariot burials are icons of Iron Age Britain. Apart from those found near Edinburgh and in Pembroke, they are clustered in eastern Yorkshire, with an outlier at Ferry Fryston in West Yorkshire. The most spectacular were at Burnby Lane and The Mile, Pocklington. Remarkably, both burials…
At Home in Roman Egypt offers the first full-scale investigation of life as experienced by the ordinary people of Roman Egypt in the 1st to 4th centuries AD. It approaches the subject by looking at the life course, following people’s experiences throughout the various stages of their existence, from conception…
What was understood about the gods, goddesses, spirits, and demons in ancient Egypt depended to a great extent on what was being explained or taught and by whom, when, and where. What was formally written down was also governed by fear of accidentally unleashing negative magical forces. Moreover, the ancient…
In 1951, Quest for the Lost City was published in the United States. Reviewed in The New York Times as ‘a sort of overland Kon-Tiki’ – in reference to Thor Heyerdahl’s recent Pacific Ocean adventure – the book was an instant success and remains in print today. In 1955, it…
For me, the crux of this book comes on page 132. Peter Davenport explains that ‘the plan of the Classical temple [was altered] into something quite similar to the more usual plan of temples in the north-west of the empire, the so-called Romano-Celtic temple…’. It is not the first time…
This book examines aspects of the medicine practised in the Roman Empire from the reign of Augustus to that of Marcus Aurelius. ‘Roman medicine’ was an amalgam, which combined the theories and practices of Greek physicians operating within the so-called ‘Hippocratic tradition’ with those of various healers from all over…
Over the past 50 years or so, the later prehistoric open-air rock art of Scotland has received much useful attention with the sterling work of researchers Ronald Morris and Stan Beckensall. It is only recently, though, that interest through Historic Scotland’s ‘Scotland’s Rock Art Project’ (ScRAP) has fully recognised the…
This well-produced collaborative volume (with 12 subsidiary authors and two illustrators) presents – very timeously – the results of the 2018 excavation of c.4.5ha of development land on the outskirts of Ely. While intermittent use is attested from the late Neolithic, the periods dominantly represented extend from the middle Iron…
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 I deals with ‘Theory and Inference’, and contains an interesting…
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 value. A big part of that value lay in the…
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 Stephen Houston edited the book and wrote its four chapters…
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 social narratives. The book is composed of 11 thematic chapters,…
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 relies on the past. Archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware that…
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 ways in which games and heritage interact, including the representation…
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 travel – and with it any hope of further fieldwork…
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 ‘firing with a machine-gun at wounded Americans, while other Frenchmen…
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 of the war in its broadest possible context. It is…