Review by Booklist Review
The first offering in a new series dubbed Places in Time focuses on European archeological sites. Scarre brings a keen expertise, acute vision, and evocative writing style to an extensive presentation of 15 prehistoric locales, ranging from France's Terra Amata to Borremose, a peat bog found on Denmark's mainland peninsula. Scarre's introductory narrative sets the scene by providing connecting links between the settlements and monuments highlighted in subsequent chapters, while colorful photographs and informative maps aid in charting a vast chronology across time periods. Adventurous tourists may wish to take advantage of the book's fascinating background facts to help plan trips, while armchair travelers will enjoy exciting images and ideas certain to inspire daydreams or stimulate expeditions of a more contemplative nature. --Alice Joyce
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
This volume launches a new series that will describe archaeological sites worldwide in a regional context. The book is organized by site, each chosen for its accessibility to the public, the significance of its remains, geographical location, and the archaeological period and type. The text gives up-to-date descriptions of each site's location, layout, excavations, remains, interpretation, and importance. Scarre (Ancient Civilizations, Addison-Wesley, 1997) uses sidebars to explain concepts (such as radiocarbon dating) and provide context essential to understanding the sites. Numerous photographs, maps, and drawings supplement the text, while suggested readings and the museum locations of artifacts are appended to each chapter. Although reading the book from cover to cover doesn't truly provide a complete picture of prehistoric Europe, Scarre's approach (a "grand tour") is successful in presenting a solid introduction to each site and different periods of prehistory. Recommended for general readers of archaeology.ÄJoyce L. Ogburn, Old Dominion Univ., Norfolk, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In an ever-absorbing survey, archaeologist Scarre, deputy director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge University, offers a fascinating glimpse of the vanished worlds of early humankind. From 40,000 b.c., when biologically modern humans first colonized Europe from Africa, through the classical epoch, Europe was traversed by groups of hunters, gatherers, and farmers whose only legacies are the campsites, forts, and graves they left behind. From hundreds of prehistoric sites, Scarre has selected 15 of the most spectacular, ranging from Terra Amata, a 380,000-year-old camp of early hominid hunters and gatherers near what is now Nice, in France, to Maiden Castle, a fortification near Dorchester in southern England that fell to the Romans in 50 a.d. A few will be familiar to nonspecialiststhe evocative cave paintings of Lascaux, France, for instance, and the intriguing stone circles at Stonehengebut most are less well known, if no less interesting. Scarre tells of Biskupin, a preserved timber town in northern Poland from 730 b.c. that was discovered in 1933 and has been called the ``Polish Pompeii'' (though much has had to be reconstructed as a result of WWII damage to the site); of Hochdorf, the richly decorated grave of a Celtic chief in Germany from around 550 b.c; of Borremose, a Danish settlement from 300100 b.c. preserved in peat, that contains perfectly intact bodies of what appear to have been murder or execution victims; and of rock art in Portugal and Italy that vividly recreates Ice Age fauna. Scarre describes each site, summarizes what little is known of the lives and customs of the inhabitants of each (for the later sites, he can sometimes rely on classical sources, such as Tacitus and Strabo), and draws speculative inferences about each culture from the site's artistic representations, layout, or physical characteristics. With careful analysis of the sometimes sparse archaeological evidence, Scarre is able to provide vivid snapshots from the distant past. Well researched and well narrated, Scarre's survey of prehistoric Europe is also informative and haunting. (107 photos, 60 illustrations and maps, not seen)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
