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 Bryony Coles The blurb on the back of this book gives an uncommonly accurate description of its contents: ‘a popular science book that tells the story of one of the most important, but least known major archaeological sites in Europe’. Before turning to this story, though, I should…
Review by Emily A Freeman The term ‘Treasure’ is complicated and has a variety of connotations for those inside and outside the heritage sector. This book of collected papers explores the legal and cultural attitudes towards ‘Treasure’, with many of the authors using early medieval examples. One of the recurring threads weaving…
Review by CH This beautifully presented book (illustrated in colour throughout) showcases the results of an archaeological initiative that set out to engage the Tarradale community with their local heritage, and, through six excavations between 2017 and 2019 (see CA 360), uncovered evidence of human activity dating back to 6500…
Review by Trevor Creighton This book is, in part, an update of D W Harding’s 2009 publication, The Iron Age Roundhouse. Significant new insights from the author justify the updated title, however. The chronology now extends from the later Neolithic into the post-Roman period. Furthermore, the roundhouse is treated not…
Review by Ceri Pennington This book presents a compilation of new interpretations of prehistoric rock art across Britain and Ireland. The beautifully illustrated volume is filled with images displaying art from a range of different sites. Case studies originate from areas including Scotland, northern England, Ireland, and Wales, with analysis…
Review by AB Almost every village in the Hauts-de-France region is home to a quarry, dug centuries ago as a source of limestone for their houses and churches, and often used as hiding places in times of trouble over the years. During the First World War, hundreds of these underground…
Review by Lucy Shipley This book is very clearly a passion project, the result of a lifetime’s love for and engagement with the Etruscan past. It provides a rare opportunity to hear the views of a specialist from another discipline, that of film studies, and to enjoy the author’s extensive…
Review by Nigel Fletcher-Jones In recent years there has been increasing desire among travellers to visit the archaeological sites of southern Egypt and Sudan in search of ‘ancient Nubia’, an elongated oval that stretched either side of the Nile from a little north of Aswan to a little north of…
Review by Eric Singleton It is a welcome departure to see a scholar stepping outside their regionalised field of study to offer an interconnected view of North American history that is not often discussed. This is what Timothy Pauketat, an expert on Mississippian archaeology, does in his new book exploring…
Review by Sarah Griffiths The city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great (c.331 BC), was strategically situated on the Mediterranean coast at the junction of three continents, protected by reefs, headlands, and the Pharos Island to the north, and by Lake Mareotis to the south. The city quickly grew…
Review by Campbell Price This finely produced book from AUC Press is written with eloquence by statue scholar and curator Simon Connor. Opening with recent debates about the role and identity of ‘public’ statues, the book sets out to investigate not just the iconographical meaning of statuary, but how it…
Review by Anna Garnett Traditional Egyptological narratives often placed Egypt at the centre, to the detriment of neighbouring cultures, with the result that our understanding of the complexities of those cultures can be partial and biased. It is always refreshing to see a new volume that seeks to remedy this…
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 beyond the traditional Egyptological centring of Egypt in the historical…
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 the two robberies of the Tomb of Tutankhamun that occurred…
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 of record. Unlike too many promptly published doctoral theses, the…
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 – ‘characters of such profound interest that Cleopatra VII fades…
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 wonderfully distils all that was best and most moving about…
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 from township to chosen place of interment, stopped for rest…
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 the latter. If the aim was to produce a gazetteer…
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 393). The main focus of the volume is the exceptionally…