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REVIEW SHANE MCLEOD
This handsomely produced book acts as a 20-year celebration of the earlier Vikings in Scotland: an archaeological study by James Graham-Campbell and Colleen Batey, and as a continuation of that still indispensable work. Both of those authors contribute to the present work, along with established experts such as Olwyn Owen, David Griffiths, Julie Bond, and Alexandra Sanmark, and up-and-coming scholars including Tom Horne, Cecily Spall, and Rachel Barrowman. The book includes 28 papers over its 340 pages, meaning that the papers often act as overviews of new or recent research rather than normal academic papers. However, this is as much a positive as a hindrance, allowing for wide coverage over the thematic sections of Native-Norse interactions, Scandinavian settlement, place names, environmental impact and land use, power and the political landscape, economy, and death and burial. The wide range of new information presented in the book makes it of interest to professionals, students, and the wider public, and it is hoped that a more affordable paperback version may be forthcoming.
Tom Horne, Elizabeth Pierce, and Rachel Barrowman (eds) Edinburgh University Press, £90 ISBN 978-1474485821
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