Neolithic Britain The Transformation of Social Worlds
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Keith Ray, MA PhD MBE FSA MIFA, is an Archaeological consultant and writer. He has been actively involved in field archaeology since 1970, when he worked with Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright at the major later Neolithic henge site at Mount Pleasant, Dorchester, Dorset. He has been involved in fieldwork and research elsewhere in southern and western England and in Scotland, Wales, France, and Norway, as well as in West Africa. In 2007 he was awarded an MBE for services to archaeology in Herefordshire. He was a collaborator on the 'Gathering Time' Neolithic chronologies project, having co-organised the excavation of the early Neolithic enclosure at Hill Croft Field, Bodenham, in Herefordshire in 2006. In 2015 he published The Archaeology of Herefordshire: An Exploration (Logaston Press), and in 2016 (as lead author) Offa's Dyke: Landscape and Hegemony in Eighth-Century Britain (Keith Ray and Ian Bapty; Oxbow/Windgather). Julian Thomas, BTech MA PhD FSA is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester. Early in his career, Julian worked on a number of key Neolithic sites, including the early Neolithic Hazleton North long barrow in the Cotswolds with Alan Saville, and the Hambledon Hill causewayed enclosure with Roger Mercer. He was appointed Professor of Archaeology at Manchester University in 2000. He was a co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project (2005-9), and is a Vice-President of the Royal Anthropological Institute. His latest book on the Neolithic more broadly, a full-length study of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition entitled The Birth of Neolithic Britain, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013.an excellent, highly informative and readable text for anyone new to the subject of the Neolithic or seeking a reference on recent developments of how complicated Neolithic chronologies fit together within Britain. It is a beautifully produced, highly readable, detailed, engaging and thought-provoking, informative book, and is highly recommended.
Ingrid O'Donnell, Journal of Skyscape Archaeology
[A] marvellously readable and intelligent book. . . . The entire book is dense with evidence (I learned about many sites for the first time) and is richly illustrated with photographs, many taken by the authors and most in color. It is a luxuriant presentation both visually and intellectually. . . . It offers valuable insights and analogies as well as a concise understanding of the current state of knowledge. The fact that it is pleasant to read is an added bonus, and the authors and Oxford University Press are to be commended for producing a model presentation of archaeological narrative and interpretation.
Peter Bogucki, Journal of Anthropological Research
This is a really attractive, wellpaced, current book (an increasingly difficult task this last half decade) it is a jolly good, novel read, full of welldated, timeless data.
Rob Ixer, Fortean Times
[T]his is a book rich in detail and ideas ... Ray and Thomas have produced a narrative that, rather like the cursus monuments they describe, connects up places and offers an engaging and immersive prehistoric journey.
Jonathan Last, Archaeological Journal
This is a very readable and persuasive book, full of interesting observations and ideas that draw together and make sense of apparently disparate and puzzling archaeological phenomena.
Chris Catling, Current Archaeology
[R]ichly informative and well structured. It weaves elegantly the local detail into grand narratives and is well argued [...] Original and innovative in style, the book sets out to be both academically stimulating and accessible. It achieves both of these successfully and does so with archaeological rigour [...] a timely and important contribution to understanding the Neolithic [...] It provides more than a regular book in that it delivers an experience
The Prehistoric Society
The authors... provide the reader with a comprehensive discussion of individual sites that have recently received intense investigation [...] The contents of the book, organised into six themed chapters, provide the reader with an up-to-date overview of the Neolithic, and, in particular, its communities and the way in which they would have embraced death, burial, and the afterlife. The authors keenly promote the esoteric mechanisms that shape and manipulate the material culture.
George Nash, Current Archaeology
[an] immensely valuable and stimulating book [...] This is...a book of ideas. Specialist will be familiar with many of them, but Ray & Thomas have done more than round up their greatest hits (good and bad), instead creating a substantial new narrative that will be appreciated by colleagues, students, and interested public alike.
British Archaeology
Neolithic Britain is extensively and excellently illustrated by photos, drawings, paintings, and engravings ... Recommended.
CHOICE
Neolithic Britain is furnished with many carefully chosen, excellent colour plates including a superbly atmospheric dust cover [...] and fine line drawings ... broad themes imbue the book, [but] they are illustrated/demonstrated by excellent specifics ... This is a really attractive, well-paced, current book ... it is a jolly good, novel read, full of well-dated, timeless data.
Rob Ixer, The Fortean Times
A scholarly, academic and very thorough look again into the period spanning 4000 - 2200 BCE, incorporating the most up-to-date research and recent discoveries concerning the cultural development of societies in Neolithic Britain ... Includes some first-rate analysis of Stonehenge and the Neolithic structures of the Orkney islands. Contains many beautiful colour photographs and illustrations.
Liza Llewellyn, The Newsletter of the Network of Ley Hunters