REVIEW BY RICHARD BRUNNING
Footmarks is a long and pleasant walk through the mind palace of prehistorian Jim Leary. Along the way, Leary’s delight in the mysteries of past human behaviour gushes forth in an engaging torrent of information, loosely based around some connection with an aspect of human movement.
The book is at once a very general and a very personal account. At intervals we are afforded glimpses of how Leary’s own life experiences have influenced his attitude to movement, from a peripatetic childhood shaped by parents in the airline industry in Asia, to his father’s obsession with random driving holidays in the USA, to his own youthful adventures teaching English in Nepal, travelling around India, and, most intimately, the tragic loss of his elder brother at an early age. Incidents from his excavating career are also peppered throughout, to complete the picture of a thoroughly likeable and self-effacing person. Enough candid information is included for amateur psychologists to delve into the reasons behind the author’s love of deep enclosing holloways.
The book discusses all aspects of human movement, largely based around evidence from the UK and with a leaning to the prehistoric period but incorporating snippets from across the whole world and all of time. This is at once the delight of the book and its main drawback. A series of 18 chapters divides the subject into topics such as footprints and tracks, styles of walking, routes, pilgrimage, ridgeways and holloways, freedoms and restrictions on movement, the role of animals, roads and bridges, weather, sea movement, and migration.
