Yorkshire’s Prehistoric Monuments

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 406

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REVIEW BY PETER HALKON

This book aims to provide a guide to the main sites of prehistoric Yorkshire that remain above ground and are possible to either visit or to view from a distance. It begins with an introduction to the basic terminology and chronology of the Neolithic to later Bronze Age. The first three chapters then focus on various regions of the old North and West Ridings, including the North Yorkshire Moors, Vales of Mowbray and York, and the Dales and Craven. The next three chapters cover, respectively, the Vale of Mowbray, the Yorkshire Dales, and the East Riding.

The book is very well illustrated with location maps, photographs, and drawings, but the conversational style in which it is written may not be to everyone’s taste. An index would have been useful, or the appropriate page numbers added to the list of sites and grid references at the back of the book. As it stands, this volume would be difficult to use as a ‘glove box’ field guide. However, in the sheer quantity and quality of the sites included, it does highlight the richness and variation of the prehistoric archaeology in England’s largest historic county.

Adam Morgan Ibbotson
History Press, £22
ISBN 978-1603991051