Non-fiction: Archaeology
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The Mildenhall Treasure is a collection of thirty-four silver objects found in a field in Suffolk in the 1940’s. This Object in Focus book by Richard Hobbs tells the story of its discovery. There was some controversy over who found what and exactly where, as well the delay in declaring the find under Treasure Trove…
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One of the current exhibitions at the British Museum is Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece and as always, there is an exhibition catalogue which is written by James Fraser, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Henry Cosmo Bishop-Wright. As with all BM catalogues, it is so much more than that. There are beautiful photos of the objects…
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Pagan Britain by Ronald Hutton is an examination of what archaeological evidence can tell us about the spiritual beliefs of prehistoric peoples in Britain. A good 50% of the book is devoted to exploring the evidence and categorizing it into time periods, so far as is possible with the dating technology available. This forensic examination…
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There were two exhibitions just starting at the British Museum in March 2020 when the UK went into its first lockdown in response to Covid-19. One was Tantra and I read the exhibition guide for that last year. The other was Arctic Culture and Climate. The circumpolar North has been inhabited for nearly 30,000 years.…
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Pre-Roman Britain is a bit of a mystery (to me, at least). Last year, I picked up A History of Ancient Britain by Neil Oliver. Apparently, there was a TV series, which I didn’t realise until sometime after I read the book. I completely missed the BBC logo on the front cover. From the time…
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Over the last year I’ve read several books from the British Museum’s Objects in Focus series. These are lovely little books that provide a bitesize history of significant objects in the Museum’s collection, often with interesting contextual information from when the object was created and when it was discovered. There’s also often information about conservation…
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Welcome to my annual flurry of posts about books, where I realise I haven’t posted anything in months, have a few weeks of activity, and then get distracted by work and life again. Anyway, recently I went to the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum and, as I do, I bought a book.…
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Sunken Cities: Egypt’s lost worlds is the exhibition book from the British Museum‘s Sunken Cities exhibition. I went to the exhibition in 2016 and picked up the book in the sale somewhat later. It has been my breakfast book for the past couple of weeks. The ones with lots of photos take much less time…
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The Gayer Anderson Cat by Neal Spencer is part of the British Museum’s Objects in Focus series. So far, I’m enjoying the series immensely. There’s something very satisfying about a short book packed full of stuff I didn’t know before. The Gayer Anderson Cat is the familiar, well-known cat statue from Ancient Egypt. I was…
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The Sutton Hoo Helmet is the second of the British Museum Objects in Focus series that I’ve read. There’s seven of them in the series so far. It is an in-depth look at an iconic object in the Museum’s collection, and is another of my favourites. The Sutton Hoo helmet is a finely crafted helmet,…
Boudica Marginalia 