A History of Norfolk in 100 Places

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…

Iron Age Chariot Burials in Britain and the Near Continent

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: A Social Archaeology

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…

Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria

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…

A Maya Universe in Stone

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…

Roman Bath: a new history and archaeology of Aquae Sulis

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…

Greco-Roman Medicine and What It Can Teach Us Today

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…

Prehistoric Rock Art in Scotland: archaeology, meaning and engagement

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…

Iron Age and Roman Settlement at Highflyer Farm, Ely, Cambridgeshire

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…

Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy

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…

A Maya Universe in Stone

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…

Return to the Interactive Past: the interplay of video games and histories

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…

Digging Deep: a journey into Southeast Asia’s past

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…

Blood and Ruins: the great imperial war, 1931-1945

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…

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