Book review: The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor (Bloomsbury,

DOI: 10.1080/01433768.2015.1044285

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Pattern and Progress: field systems of the second and early first millennium BC in southern Britain (British Archaeological Reports British Series 587, Oxford, 2013). By Julie English. 296 × 210 mm. vii + 204 pp. b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 4073 1195 1. Price £39.00.

This book, based on a doctoral thesis supervised by the late Peter Drewett and David Rudling, investigates the chronological succession of Bronze Age field systems and linear earthworks, for the most part, in seven study areas within an area bounded by Southampton, Stonehenge, Guildford and Eastbourne. These include archaeologically well-known sites — Plumpton Plain, Brigmerston/Milston Down, Thundersbarrow, Woolbury, and the Windover Hill field system. Setting these sites in their chronological and landscape contexts has involved the intricate task of synthesising and reinterpreting a considerable variety of sources, old and new. Pattern and Progress concludes with an interpretive discussion of the two major components of the sequence — coaxial field systems and the smaller but more prominent field systems and enclosures which replaced them. English’s approach to interpreting coaxial systems is similar to my own. She draws inferences from observed phenomena, explores several potential explanatory contexts — demographic, socio-political, agrarian, — and tries to comprehend the mindset or ‘ideology’ behind these remarkable layouts.

English’s work makes it abundantly clear that Middle Bronze Age coaxial field systems were well represented on the Wessex chalkland, fitting into a pattern also documented by their neighbours — the ditched coaxials unearthed (literally) by

rescue archaeology on the southern and eastern English lowlands (for which see David Yates’s 2007 Land, Power and Prestige) and the reaves of upland Dartmoor. The chalkland coaxials evidently share the strangeness of their fellows on other geologies. For English, they express agrarian self-confidence, and a kind of ‘success’. Yet at the same time they were apparently not very ‘busy’; no palaeo-environmentalist has envisaged vast fields of waving corn. Their lynchets are strikingly low and formless. The coaxial systems show few signs of modification, yet sometimes their orientations are changed, which seems an odd, fussy thing to do, especially if the boundaries were hedged. Furthermore, these ‘terrain oblivious’ boundaries breast some very steep slopes, sometimes at 30 or 40 degree gradients. Contemporary settlements are elusive and were evidently often unenclosed. Gateways are hard to locate, and in many systems there are few apparent internal lanes or droveways. At the same time, these systems represented an ‘irreversible’ step change in landscape control, and they must have seriously constrained freedom of travel. One gets the curious impression that crops were less important than coaxiality ….

These coaxials have their idiosyncracies. A few are highly ‘infilled’, containing dense networks of boundaries; the ‘chequerboard’ patterns displayed by Thundersbarrow and Kingley Vale are actually quite rare within coaxial systems. Within some, English discerns ‘blocks’ each of roughly 15–25 ha. The long, curving external boundaries of some of these coaxial systems are in contrast, for instance, with Dartmoor’s long straight ‘terminal’ reaves. There are glimpses of the open pastures, communal thoroughfares and carefully located burial mound cemeteries which

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must have complemented the coaxials; they reinforce the sense that these are landscapes to be understood on a Large Terrain scale.

The most striking phenomena picked out here are the sets of fields known as ‘aggregated’, ‘agglomerated’, or ‘looped’ (the author really should have standardised her terminology!). These field sets, created in the Late Bronze Age, occupy small zones within the coaxials, which they mostly slight. Their lynchets are more prominent than those of their predecessors, often forming ‘playing card’ field corners which can be massive and are often staggered; here it seems that individual fields were laid out one by one, at unknown intervals (possibly not much longer than the proverbial ten minutes). These field sets enclose more realistic acreages, in terms of growing crops to feed families. Perhaps the switch to aggregate field systems was yet another element in the horizon of massive cultural change at the Middle/Late Bronze Age transition. At any rate, this ‘retrenchment’ raises, more obviously than elsewhere, the issue of the ‘decline and fall’ of coaxials — a question as mysterious as that of their genesis. For the latter, English offers a couple of brief, speculative suggestions about possible origins on the Continent and in a Beaker cultural context. Hmm, we’ll see.

This book has at least three textual lacunae, and would be easier to read if the illustrations and text were more closely integrated and cross-referenced. Although little new light is shed on the difficult interpretive issues around coaxials, Julie English is to be congratulated on a piece of thoughtful, meticulous analysis which constitutes a valuable addition to the literature on British prehistoric field systems.

University of Wales, andrew Fleming

Trinity St David

Britain Begins (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). By Barry Cunliffe. 246 × 189 mm. 568 pp. 140 b/w illustrations, 152 maps and figures. ISBN 978 0 1996 7945 4. Price £25.00.

As the author explains, this book attempts to do two things: first, to give an account of how past writers

tried to understand the peoples of these islands and where they have come from; and, second, to offer a narrative of how such peoples over the some 12,000 years contributed to the formation of Britain. As one might expect from such an eminent archaeologist the result is a highly readable and well-researched book which acknowledges that there is still much to learn. (But oh dear — what has happened to the scales on some of the maps? Stonehenge is shown as about 30 km from Woodhenge rather than just over 3 km away (fig. 6.1) and Scotland has expanded (fig. 6.29) with 40 km becoming 400 km!).

The first part analyses the development of myths and legends about British ancestry which have been proposed over the centuries, many of which endured longer after they had been factually disproved. The author covers the whole spectrum in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. The bulk of the book is, however, concerned with the second approach — tracing the people who moved into these islands (or into the land mass that preceded them) and the physical changes they wrought, the cultures they introduced. When many archaeologists in recent years have tended to play down the influence of immigration and invasion in favour of cultural exchange the author doesn’t shy away (or so it seems to this reader) from suggesting that successive influxes of people did indeed make massive contributions as they were gradually assimilated into the existing populations, although significant cultural contributions could also be introduced through the incursions of the few intermarrying with the indigenous communities or through trade.

The story begins earlier, with the first hunter gatherers venturing in on fleeting visits as the ice receded around 10,000 b.c., subsequently settling as climatic conditions permitted. In this section, as elsewhere throughout the book, the distribution of archaeological artefacts helps to indicate regions of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic activity. Not only are the waves of newcomers set into the wider European context but attempts are made to examine such modern forms of evidence as DNA analysis, the limitations and shortcomings of which are fully explained. So the story continues, from the Neolithic peoples who introduced agriculture about 4200 b.c., introducing, too, new forms of ritual

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involving the constriction of burial monuments and causewayed enclosures: features which betray a sense of community affirming ‘social obligations, allegiances, and hierarchies’ (pp. 163–5). Through phases of increased mobility, especially by sea, one meets the Beaker peoples, the introduction of bronze weaponry, the speaking of a Celtic language by at least 2000 b.c., and the increasing evidence of a warrior aristocracy emerging as the elite around 1500 b.c. with territoriality expressed in monuments to ancestors or gods, votive offerings made in rivers and wetlands, man-made boundaries and early hillforts, plus extensive coaxial field systems (although climatic deterioration set in about 1000 b.c. bringing colder and wetter conditions that perhaps fostered pastoral farming). Conflict between regional groups seems to have increased during the ninth century as iron weapons became more plentiful. Regional patterns become more pronounced — in the distribution of hillforts and their aggrandisement not only as expressions of power but almost certainly as defensive structures, in styles of pottery and art, or in cultural expressions such as the chariot burial practice of north-east England, the use and types of coinage and so on.

The profound changes introduced by the Romans are well known and the author continues to discuss the coming of the Anglo-Saxons and the subsequent Scandinavian settlers. For this reader, the Anglo-Saxon period received barely sufficient recognition, with limited mention of cemeteries, a few settlement types and metalwork, although our present understanding of the genetic evidence is acknowledged. Here landscape and land use tend to get lost — the emphasis is upon the mobility of peoples, whether as invading immigrants or more peaceful settlers, carriers of new cultural aspirations with their fresh artefacts and genetic composition. The scale of immigrations varied across Britain and Ireland but, above all, the outcome was that c. 990–c. 1010, in a second phase of raiding, much of eastern Britain was taken over by a Danish elite and the outcome was ‘to drive the consolidation of political power among the indigenous populations. In Britain disparate Anglo-Saxon, British, and Danish kingdoms were brought together under a single king’ (p. 483) and ‘the Scandinavian impact on Britain in terms of population change was probably greater than any other incursion at any time in the

previous history of the islands and was not matched until the late twentieth century’ (p. 486), barely interrupted by the low numbers that imposed a Norman elite (also of Scandinavian origin) in 1066.

No doubt new archaeological projects will clarify certain features but as a resume of present thought this book is ambitious, thorough and extremely useful to all with an interest in archaeology.

University of Birmingham della hooke

The Archaeology of the West Coast of South Africa (British Archaeological Reports International Series 2526, Oxford, 2013). Edited by Antonieta Jerardino, Antonia Malan and David Braun. 210 × 292 mm. vi + 168 pp. 52 b/w illustrations, 12 tables. ISBN 978 1 4073 1144 9. Price £32.00.

This edited volume on recent work on the archaeology of the West Coast of South Africa presents a number of paradoxes. There is no doubt that the Cape coasts represent some of the best-researched parts of the African continent, outside of Egypt, and where Egypt dominates in terms of quantity and expended resources, the Cape region more than makes up for this with the quality of the research that has been undertaken. This volume seeks to celebrate that history of innovative research and to provide a summary of the current state of affairs for the entire length of the human career, whilst also serving to shift emphasis from the more celebrated work on the southern coast to that of the west.

As a statement of the current state of knowledge across time and along the hundreds of kilometres of the West Coast this is therefore an important volume and the papers are of a uniformly high quality. They are not summaries of the archaeological record in its entirety but rather they offer vignettes into specialised analyses of particular locations and issues. Happily for this journal there is a healthy discussion of landscapes and of archaeological survey within those landscapes. It is also important to point out that the term ‘coast’ is used in a fairly liberal sense to include communities in the interior who are regularly accessing coastal resources. As the editors point out in their introduction, prior


to the arrival of Europeans there was very little maritime, as opposed to coastal, activity. Hence, the interaction between the coast and its immediate interior would have been extremely important.

There is remarkably even chronological coverage, from Early Stone Age to the present, although geographically there is a natural bias towards the south with its more habitable environment and proximity to Cape Town. It is noticeable that the one chapter to have a sole focus on the Namaqualand coast (Dewar and Orton) has a seemingly different remit, one of documenting the kinds of cultural materials available. This again reflects the much greater wealth of research that has been undertaken on the southern part of the West Coast.

Of particular note from a landscape perspective was the chapter by Kandel and Conard examining the Geelbek dunes. This unusual environment meant that the mostly indigenous, stone tool using human traces were sporadic and generally low in density, but also that they had minimal means for dating. Nevertheless, drawing on a mature long-term research initiative, the chapter was able to explore a number of extremely well-recorded scatters of material and consider their meaning in the overall use of landscape. Another important chapter is that by Malan et al. who consider the West Coast since a.d. 1600. This explores the range of engagements between indigenous populations and Europeans and also between coastal and interior communities. It does seem to be a significantly longer chapter than the rest, but this allows an examination of some extremely significant encounters within colonial landscapes.

It is important to end this review by considering some of the paradoxes thrown up by the volume. These begin with the beautiful images of the front cover, indicating in colour important places and engagements in the landscape, which are not actually used by, or related to, the contents of the book. This is quite a disappointment. Erlandson in his brief concluding chapter challenges those working on the West Coast to explore contemporary environmental issues, such as the impacts of sea level change and increased erosion, almost entirely ignored in this volume. A further problem is that the book provides a detailed and archaeologically competent, even innovative, exploration of a stark and quite distinctive landscape that has sponsored

various intriguing cultural manifestations, without ever really attempting to consider a landscape perspective, which investigates how humans constructed their own cultural landscapes and how they moved through these cultural constructs. An obvious contrast would be between indigenous and European perspectives on the meaning of ‘coast’. Such a dichotomy is also played out in a final paradox. The Cape has long been the focus of excellent archaeological activity, one which rightly attracts international scholars because of the weight of high-quality data that is available and one which needs concerted efforts to protect, as Deacon et al. point out. Yet, how can archaeology sustain expenditure on this cultural heritage in the fledgling democracy, when its work does not speak directly to the majority of South Africa’s citizens? These are challenges indeed.

University College, London andrew reid

Silbury Hill. The largest prehistoric mound in Europe (English Heritage, Swindon, 2013). Edited by Jim Leary, David Field and Gill Campbell. 276 × 219 mm. 382 pp. 210 b/w and colour illustrations. ISBN 978 1 8480 2045 0. Price £100.00.

In their volume on Silbury Hill, Jim Leary, David Field and Gill Campbell radically challenge the model of the monument’s origins as a planned ‘grand design’. Instead, they regard the processes, both the selection of its materials and the act of building it, as the prime focus of the late Neolithic people who constructed it over four to five generations c. 2450 b.c. In this view, Silbury Hill was always in a state of becoming a design statement of a different type. There appears to be little activity at the site in the Bronze and Iron Ages; but a small town and a ritual complex grew up around the skirts of the hill in the Romano-British period, and it was later to become an Anglo-Saxon fortification.

One of the great strengths of the book is its superb presentation of empirical detail which is likely to be an indispensable resource for future researchers. For example, the detailing of the new Bayesian frameworked radio-carbon date results, palaeoenvironmental evidence, analysis

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of the lithics and the mound’s stratigraphy are accessibly presented and thoughtfully written. The volume also includes reports on medieval water management, and the historiography of antiquarian and archaeological investigations of the site and its wider landscape. There is, too, an excellent account of the work of the Silbury Conservation Project and Silbury Hill Project Board. Anyone interested in gaining insight into the complexities of dealing with a World Heritage Site which has been investigated at various times over the last 250 years will be rewarded by the focus in Chapter 10 ‘The Conservation of Silbury Hill’. It outlines the range of investigations into the causes of the collapse of the monument — previous digging into it was a major contributor —, and offers engineering solutions for future conservationists of the monument.

For this reviewer, and perhaps for readers of this journal, Chapter 8 was of particular interest since it is here that the key questions of interest about Silbury Hill are addressed (at least in part): why here?’, ‘why at all?’ and ‘why that shape?’. Problems with the chapter are indicated in the gap between the text on the dustcover which says that the book offers ‘a reinterpretation of the construction of the hill’ and the closing ‘Coda’ to the chapter which says that the purpose of recent English Heritage field interventions was ‘not designed to answer pressing research questions about the nature of the mound’. This lacuna between advertised intention and actuality may underlie the authors’ tendency to argue that the principal motivation for the construction of the monument may have been the phenomenological responses to the landscape of its late Neolithic inhabitants, rather than more pragmatic or functional interpretations.

Problems with that approach are signalled by two aspects of the landscape in the immediate vicinity of the Hill that are discussed in the section on ‘Water and stone’ in the same chapter. The first is that, in terms of its slightly wider landscape content, Silbury Hill lies at the confluence of two rivers with significant consequences for the movement of both people and animals past and to the site. The second, more immediately local, consideration is that the Hill is ringed by springs that emerge at a constant temperature throughout the year therefore extending growing seasons in the fields nearby.

The practical implications of this topography may mean that an interpretation that relies simply on a symbolic relationship between the Hill and water may be too limited. Furthermore, a longer term landscape history of that specialised geography that includes the periods before the construction of the monument may also have something valuable to contribute. It is time for a research project that tries to puts Silbury into a landscape of people trying to make a living, rather than just a symbolic or ritualised landscape.

The volume is beautifully illustrated throughout with well-chosen photographs, illustrations and diagrams, supplemented by large, well-presented site plans which fold out from the back of the book. The lavish production allows the authors to offer a gradual, layered build-up of evidence and interpretation in a style both scholarly and accessible allowing both professional and amateur readily to understand the history of that wonderful landscape from the time of its construction to the present day.

University of Buckingham david Jacques

The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor (Bloomsbury, London, 2013). By Charles F. W. Higham. 216 × 138 mm. 144 pp. 22 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 7809 3419 8. Price £45.00.

Charles Higham is undoubtedly one of the giants of South-East Asian archaeology and one of its most capable synthesisers. His work on Khok Phanom Di, Nong Nor, Ban Lum Khao, Noen U-Loke, Non Muang Kao and other sites coupled with his on-going use of human remains to establish a new and robust chronological framework for South-East Asian prehistoric sites, continue to shape the way in which archaeologists understand the region. This volume provides a summary of the now finished Origins of Angkor (OA) project whilst highlighting illustrative findings from other key sites. The OA project approached the development of Angkorian civilisation through a broad geographical and temporal framework focusing primarily on the establishment of the prehistoric cultural sequence in Northeast Thailand. The OA’s work has already been captured in six extensive volumes detailing


individual sites (or particular historical phases at said sites).

As part of the Bloomsbury ‘Debates in Archae-ology’ series The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor probes four key questions in South-East Asian prehistoric archaeology: Who was responsible for the Neolithic Revolution (with a focus on the cultivation of rice)? Who was responsible for the introduction of metallurgy and what was its impact? When did iron become a part of the technological repertoire of the region and how did it change society? And finally, what were the origins of the civilisation of Angkor — both domestic and foreign? Higham attempts to carefully balance the early twentieth-century paradigm which favoured the study of external stimulus (migration and diffusion) with more recent work which has privileged internal evolutions, adaptations, and social processes.

This volume does not have an overt focus on landscape which will leave some of the readers of this journal wanting. Higham begins by painting a picture of developed hunter-gatherer communities living along the environmentally rich South-East Asian coastline into which rice farmers from southern China penetrated; mixing with the local population. Centuries later, Higham purports that the spread of bronze expertise from China brought differential access to exotic goods enabling aggrandisers in the Neolithic communities to achieve social success which they were unable to pass on to their successors. Although the origins of iron smelting in South-East Asia may never be identified, according to Higham’s thesis, heightened conflict and competition for scarce prestige re-sources during the Iron Age is demonstrated by skeletal trauma, the presence of iron weaponry and the emergence of defensive earthworks. The author concludes his synthesis by promulgating the notion that marked population growth during the Iron Age was capitalised upon by military elites who defeated rivals to found early states — creating the conditions out of which Angkor itself later emerged. He concludes, as others have, that Angkor’s ‘foundations had nothing to do with Alexander the Great or the Romans [as once suggested by Europeans], but everything to do with the ambitions of the indigenous people interacting with and taking advantage of the new ideas, technologies and exotic goods generated

with the rise of international exchange along the Southern Silk Road’ (p. 113).

Higham’s 2003 The Civilization of Angkor provided an overview of the changes occurring in South-East Asia from the prehistoric period until Angkor’s fall and its European (re) ‘discovery’. The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor covers much of the same ground as this previous volume, concluding with the rise of Angkor rather than its later demise. The main difference is that it usefully adds summaries of key findings from the OA’s post-2003 work. Yet, after the introduction, one has to wait until page 87 before Angkor itself is mentioned — just before the book comes to an abrupt halt. Those seeking to understand the recent work on prehistoric sites of Angkor itself or specifically of Cambodia would need to supplement this book (which focuses primarily on sites in Thailand) by looking at the reports of excavations in Mimot, Laang Spean, Lovea village, Phum Sophy, Koh Ta Meas and Prei Khmeng in Angkor. If the reader is after a better understanding of the early states which preceded Angkor, Miriam Stark or Michael Vickery’s work might provide a more comprehensive entry point. Finally, if it is Angkor itself which intrigues the reader, Higham’s earlier works affords a better introduction.

University of Pretoria britt bailie

Building the Great Stone Circles of the North (Windgather Press, Oxford, 2013). Edited by Colin Richards. 246 × 185 mm. 320 pp. Numerous b/w and colour illustrations, 16 tables. ISBN 978 1 905119 12 0. Price £39.95.

The book provides a detailed account of the stone circles of Scotland, demonstrating their importance for a wider understanding of the British Neolithic. It is extremely well written and an engaging read. It skilfully weaves together the results of fieldwork and excavation, with complex theoretical discussion. To my mind, this is an exemplary example of archaeological writing at its best. And it is well illustrated with a wide selection of both drawings and photographs. There has been a disturbing trend within archaeology in recent years towards digitally

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produced drawings that represent sites at ever-growing scales of accuracy without due account of what is being represented — representation rather than interpretation. The use of colour in numerous section drawings and plans within this book goes someway to rectifying this trend, highlighting key features under discussion and adding considerably to the interpretations being made.

Stone circles have long held fascination for antiquarians, archaeologists and the general public alike. They remain largely enigmatic and yet rep-resent one of the most visited categories of prehistoric monuments in the British Isles. This book seeks to explore this paradox by providing us with new ways of thinking and interpreting these mysterious monuments. It begins with a discussion of the problems of interpreting stone circles. Richards argues that rather than focusing upon the classification and use of stone circles — perhaps an impossible task — we should consider their construction. He argues that the function of stones circles can best be explored through the social process of making, a process freed from notions of an architectural design process, and more closely aligned to a emergent vernacular tradition of materials and their transformation.

Richards argues that a unifying feature of all stone circles is the construction of space and that this encirclement can be thought of as a process of ‘wrapping’ or enclosure. This process of ‘wrapping’ emphasises practice and focuses attention back towards the creation and construction of stone circles rather than upon there typological classification or meaning. This concept is explored and developed in subsequent chapters though a range of sites and case studies.

The book uses the concept of wrapping to explore two key regions: the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland. Chapter 2 discusses stone circles in the west of Scotland, including those of Machrie Moor, Arran, Templewood, Kilmartin, Argyll and Cultoon, Islay. Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 focus upon Orkney, whilst chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10 deal with the Western Isles of Scotland, and particularly the complex of stone circles at Calanais. In Chapter 2 Richards examines the social process of construction. His account of Templewood provides a thoughtful discussion of the use and types of building materials in these monuments, and its potential material significance.

This theme is continued in his discussion and interpretation of the Ring of Brodgar (Chapter 4) where he argues that the construction of this monument was formed by the bringing together of multiple sources of stone from various locales within in the island landscapes. Richards convincingly argues that this process of construction created social cohesion and inter-connectedness through communal and inter-island effort.

Richards’ focus on the social significance of the construction of stone circles, and in particular his concept of wrapping, will make this book of interest to prehistorians across the globe. Whilst the concept of wrapping is interesting and convincingly applied to the archaeological record — and clearly could be equally applied to many other categories of prehistoric monument — one remains sceptical about its whole-scale application. That said, this is a wonderful book and whilst it may not replace Burls’ encyclopaedic work on stone circles, it stands comfortably alongside this earlier work as a significant contribution to the study of these most enigmatic of prehistoric monuments.

University of Wales, Bangor gary robinson

The Topography and the Landscape of Roman Dacia (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 2501, Oxford, 2013). By Florin Fodorean. 295 × 208 mm. vii + 147 pp. 53 b/w illustrations, 1 colour. ISBN 978 1 4073 1117 3. Price £30.00.

This useful, if slim, volume presents an updated version of the author’s Romanian doctoral research. Fodorean has structured the book around four chapters covering the landscape and topography of Roman Dacia and provides a welcome synopsis of this understudied Roman province.

The first chapter begins with a summary of the main scholarly works related to Roman roads before introducing the ancient literary testimonia relating to Dacia. It provides an analysis of Roman motives for conquest before concluding with a description of the sequence of conquest in relation to road building.

The second chapter is organised around two broad sections. The first summarises the ancient


sources relating to the roads of Roman Dacia, focusing primarily on the Tabula Peuteringeriana, the medieval copy of a late antique Roman map. Here Fodorean sketches the main arguments regarding the map and its relation to ancient conceptions of space, relying heavily on Talbert and Nicolet. The second section focuses on evidence related to Dacia specifically: sections of the Peutinger map, and surviving inscriptions including milestones. The chapter concludes with a description of the routes of the three main Roman roads through the province.

If we think of roads as providing a skeletal structure to the topography of a region, Fodorean attempts to put the flesh on the body in his third chapter. He populates the landscapes that the roads traversed with discussions of various settlement types: the legionary fortress at Potaissa and asso-ciated vicus, the city of Napoca and environs, and surrounding dependent settlements and watch towers. The analysis is firmly focused on the roads, and this leads to a certain circularity. Most rural settlements, we are told, occur close to identified major Roman arteries (pp. 57–8), but elsewhere we discover that there is a lack of micro-regional topographic studies to populate the rural landscape (p. 63). In other words, the known settlements are close to roads because only the areas close to roads have been examined. The absences may represent a lack of archaeological knowledge rather than a distinctive settlement pattern.

The last chapter tries to remedy this by studying antiquarian and historical sources: three from the nineteenth century, and limited sections of the Peutinger map in more detail. Fodorean uses these to populate the rural landscape of Dacia with previously recognised sites to alleviate the gaps in contemporary archaeological knowledge. At times the text dissolves into descriptive lists of proposed routeways, but he does highlight import-ant methodological and institutional challenges facing Romanian archaeologists since the 1950s. A clear strength of this chapter is Fodorean’s effort to situate these nineteenth-century maps within their cultural and intellectual contexts. Less successful is his critical engagement with how to read historical maps for contemporary archaeological purposes.

The image quality is on the whole quite good — especially in relation to the various maps — though some of the photographs only serve to give a

general flavor of the Romanian landscape. It would have been nice to have the images integrated more fully with the text, rather than presented at the end of the volume, but given that BAR places the onus on the author and undertakes no in-house copy-editing, this is perhaps an unfair niggle. The flaws in the publication process become more important in relation to the author’s use of English — at times he is remarkably clear and precise, while at others the meaning of the prose is difficult to untangle. Professional copy-editing would have caught most of these infelicities.

The book should appeal to students and scholars of Roman provincial archaeology. As an introduction to the landscape of Roman Dacia, it provides an accessible overview. Fodorean is obviously well versed in the scholarly literature relating to Dacia, though he does not consider theoretical approaches to landscape. He also has a rather unreconstructed view of the civilising nature of Roman control, equating built infrastructure with a superiority in culture. This, coupled with his tendency to quote extensively from the secondary literature, can frustrate.

However, these criticisms should not detract from the main benefit of the book: its summary of the current state of knowledge regarding the topography of Roman Dacia. Indeed, its greatest merit is in the access it provides to Romanian sources for English speakers. This volume highlights the range and quality of scholarship undertaken in Romania today. Given the increasing numbers of English-language students participating in field schools in Romania, this will serve not only as a useful introduction but will help situate that fieldwork in a Romanian, rather than a strictly Roman, context.

University of Leicester dan stewart

The Ruin of Roman Britain. An archaeological perspective (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013). By James Gerrard. 252 × 180 mm. 361 pp. 113 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 1070 3863 9. Price £65.00.

The paradigmatic view of the ending of Roman Britain is predicated on economic collapse following

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the withdrawal of Roman administration that was compounded by climate change, plague and significant immigration. In the anarchy that followed, it is argued, all aspects of Romano-British governance, social relations and material culture simply disappeared. Fifth- and sixth-cent-ury cultivators were reduced to hand-to-mouth subsistence, their survival vulnerable to chaotic political conditions as rival warlords tussled for political control. In support of the thesis historians and archaeologists have pointed to the swift dis-appear ance from circulation of Roman coins, the abandonment of urban centres which had formerly been pivotal in underpinning exchange, the proliferation of local, handmade pottery instead of wheel-thrown wares transported from regional manufactories, wholesale desertion of farms and settlement, and the decline of magnificent stone and brick villas into shabby decay or abandonment. Of these, the cessation of Roman coin imports is believed to have been the most damaging: specialised agricultural products could no longer be sold for cash in urban markets; access to imperial markets was lost; and landholders and tenants were forced into to a highly localised, subsistence economy whose stresses eroded political stability. Thus, the argument suggests, even if the agricultural landscape was not depopulated, a wider economic, social and political void provided the conditions in which Germanic warriors could impose control through their own, imported institutions.

James Gerrard’s innovative study persuasively challenges that explanation of systemic shock. Instead, he suggests that external factors such as climate change and plague were too late to have played any significant role in the destruction of late Roman Britain. His rejection of two further economic explanations is as convincing. A ‘slide and bump’ explanation is, he argues, also unsatisfactory since it is based on material changes like the shift from stone to wooden buildings, from wheel-thrown to handmade pottery, and changes in the character of everyday artifacts. Instead, he suggests, such judgements are teleological, based on modern consumerist values that may not have been relevant in a post-Roman context. A third economic model, that of a ‘soft landing’, is predicated on the loss in value of bronze and copper coins as people were unable to convert assets into cash.

However, he argues, since the agricultural sector that dominated economic production throughout the first millennium a.d. was largely unmonetarised, the presence or absence of coinage may not have affected it very much at all. Indeed, the removal of tax and rent burdens from sub-Roman peasant producers may even have encouraged a ‘major’ agricultural transformation, that allowed farmers to invest less labour in creating, and to retain a greater proportion of, their surpluses, thus improving rather than degrading standards of living (p. 103).

If the economic shifts of the fifth and sixth centuries were not as destructive as the para-digm suggests, how are the changes of the fifth and sixth centuries to be explained? Gerrard usefully experiments with structural analysis of state functions, especially the proposition that all governance is underpinned by implicit violence institutionalised in the state. When direct Roman administration was removed in the early fifth century so, too, was this aspect of statehood. The possibility that anarchy might follow if laws were unenforced may, he suggests, have stimulated the militarisation of leadership as ‘indigenous elites adopted some elements of martial display’ (p. 276). That is, that leading members of regional elites gathered that institutionalised violence to themselves in the aftermath of the Roman withdrawal from Britain, thereby assuring the general continuity and stability of late British governance.

To this point, the argument is convincing. The next step is more controversial. Gerrard argues that the origins of each of the sub-Roman polities led by such militarised elites, and which eventually evolved into the middle Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, lay in the enormous privately-owned estates that they owned — essentially, that great estates became self-governing units. His argument is predicated on the premise that all rights of collective property were eliminated after a.d. 43 by an incoming Roman administration which regarded all land as private property. That premise stands in fairly direct contradiction to the conventional scholarly consensus that prehistoric private and collective property rights continued to be recognised and governed through the period of Roman administra-tion of Britain.

There is, however, so much that is solid in the


larger part of the volume that the weakness of this latter section can be discounted. Gerrard has made a major contribution to the way we think not only about the fourth to seventh centuries but also to models of historical change.

University of Cambridge susan oosthuizen

Dark Age Liguria: regional identity and local power, c.400–1020 (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2013). By Ross Balzaretti. 192 pp. 234 × 156 mm. 10 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 7809 3030 5. Price £16.99.

Man’s relationship with the environment is particu-larly revealing in the Middle Ages, when local small-scale environmental exploitation provided the primary means for subsistence and social mobility. Difficulties lie in assessing the limited evidence for man’s landscape interventions in this period.

Balzaretti’s short and agile volume assesses contemporary texts, archaeological reports, anti-quarian finds and post-medieval landscapes to reveal the dynamic and diverse roles played by ecology in this sometimes-overlooked corner of northwestern Italy. It is divided into six rich chapters: ‘Sources and debates’, ‘Historical ecology in the Apennines’, Political and religious change’, ‘Genoa’, ‘Vara Valley’, and ‘People without history’. The author sets Liguria within such existing debates as the significance of climactic change in the fifth to seventh centuries in the region, and the centrality of Genoa to cross-Mediterranean connections in this period. Analysis of archaeological pollen samples contextualised by charters and legal edicts demonstrates early medieval shifts in cultivated species as populations moved from shore to inland locations: reduced alder and willow on the one hand, and with increased plantago lanceolata and hazel on the other, indicate clearance by burning and the existence of wooded meadows. It is hypothesised that these changes reflect the influence of climate change on demographic shift. Balzaretti notices the rise in number of chestnut trees, which he interprets as an index for food consumption in a poor economy (though other research has recently shown that in other parts of Italy chestnuts — both for wood and food — were regarded as quite prestigious in the same period). He provides two

site-specific studies: Genoa (and its hinterland) which administered Liguria, and a minor eastern valley, the Varese, the latter an area of few records. Balzaretti uses two methods: reading archaeology against texts and ‘méthode régressive’ of later property inventories to hypothesise about earlier ones and of later medieval centres to imagine earlier power networks. He opens up many possible explanations, ultimately unverifiable. Throughout the book, there is a strong focus on the valleys of eastern Liguria, from which the dating of the pollen is fraught. The evidence is then read against agricultural practices, such as alnocultura (a type of land management by clearance), which are attested only in the modern period. This kind of thinking offers many possible reconstructions of past ecology, but it raises concerns about the big picture drawn from so many chains of hypothesis and speculation. The problems of pollen records aside, those valleys may have been affected more profoundly than other parts of Liguria by the worsening of weather and flooding which Balzaretti shows for the early Middle Ages; a catastrophic view first put forward by earlier researchers.

For all Balzaretti’s efforts in reconstructing what might have been, there is some inattention to analysing what certainly was. The handles and amphorae toe in fig. 6.7 are shown in an ice-cream tub, set on a trattoria table. They might be ‘late antique pottery’ from Scurtabò, as described, perhaps even a Late Roman 1 and a North African spatheion (fourth to sixth centuries) but the photo does not show the handle or toe in profile and gives no measuring scale, so neither Balzaretti nor anyone else could possibly identify them properly without heading back to the agriturismo whose proprietor found them. Testi (or testelli), the flat pottery pans used for chestnut flatbreads, are dated to the seventh century but actually only appear in the tenth century. The bronze frying pan found at Rossiglione is evoked for its power to ‘conjure images of dark-age omelettes’ (p. 36) but it is surely more meaningful as an index of Lombard activity in the hinterland of Genoa perhaps even before the famous conquest of the city.

Overall, the book makes the case for distinct, multiple concentrations of power and resources in early medieval Liguria: in Genoa, of course, with its Mediterranean cosmopolitanism and

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imports, and in certain inland valleys with access to highlands, where an ecology of woodland, pastures and carefully selected crops supported small populations. The small-scale local economies of each resemble those of prehistory more than they do the Roman or later periods. The parallel is convincing, reminding us that the Roman period was atypical in so many ways; pre-modern life and landscapes were characterised less by over-arching systems and more by local environmental strategies.

The book outlines the strengths and challenges of studying climactic variation in small agrarian societies. Balzaretti’s knowledge of the place and its peculiarities emerge in his expression of Ligurian diversity and his obvious affection for it. The book’s strength is in the questions it asks and the possibilities it suggests for shedding light on the obscure corners of past landscapes.

Istituto di Storia della enrico giannichedda

Cultura Materiale di Genova Birkbeck College, University caroline goodson

of London

Early Medieval Art and Archaeology in the Northern World: studies in honour of James Graham-Campbell (Brill, Leiden, 2013). Edited by Andrew Reynolds and Leslie Webster. 159 × 241mm. 1024 pp. 224 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 9 0042 3503 8. Price €249.00.

James Graham-Campbell has been a giant figure in early medieval archaeology for as long as I can remember. His Viking World (1980) was probably one of the first scholarly works I possessed when still at school, and I first met him, albeit briefly, in the company of the late Martin Welch when, as a nineteen-year-old undergraduate, I made an ill-fated attempt to switch from Scandinavian Studies to Medieval Archaeology at UCL. Since then his works have been a constant on my intellectual horizon.

The volume under review, weighing in at over a thousand pages, truly reflects his stature within the field. With over forty contributions it is one of those volumes which it is impossible to do justice to in a short review. The book is divided into four major sections entitled ‘Objects’ (by far the largest,

appropriately), ‘Hoards’, ‘Places’ and ‘Style Symbol and Meaning’; the collection is bookended by entertaining memoirs of James by David Wilson (can one still find Golden Plover in restaurants?) and Negley Harte.

The first section, ‘Objects’, has a number of papers, as one would imagine, on James’s speciality, ‘Viking’ metalwork but also ranges much more widely in early medieval studies including, inter alia, a fascinating account of how a solidus of the Emperor Heraclius found its way into the Wilton Cross pendant by Marion Archibald (pp. 51–72), a discussion of the material evidence for horse gear in Wales, by Mark Redknap (pp. 177–210), and a paper by Judy Jesch discussing the representation of swords in skaldic verse (pp. 341–58). The section on hoards includes a very important paper by Gareth Williams reviewing the significance of tenth-century hoards from across northern England for understanding the silver economy of the age (pp. 459–86), but also a comparative analysis from Spain by James’s UCL colleague Wendy Davies (pp. 541–59).

Readers of this journal may be more interested in the section on ‘Places’ in which Andrew Reynolds and Stuart Brookes revisit the tenth-century defence network of Wessex, emphasising the role of reused prehistoric monuments in functional rather than purely symbolic terms (pp. 561–606); Helen Clarke uses the Sandwich Custumal of c. 1300 to reinterpret the landscape of the southern end of the Wantsum Channel in the hope of shedding light on the Late Saxon development of the port as a major base for the royal fleet (pp. 607–30); and Mick Monk examines the way in which agricultural practice in Ireland may have changed in the course of the Viking Age (pp. 685–718). The final section, with its slightly sententious heading, includes an interesting discussion of the role and function of Insular metalwork, once it had been translated to Norway by Viking raiders, by John Sheehan, drawing heavily on the work of Lotte Hedeager and Ross Samson (though sadly, but consistently, misspelling the latter’s name) (pp. 809–24); a useful paper by the excellent Birgit Arrhenius on the interpretation of treasure from Birka (pp. 843–58); while Else Roesdahl returns once more to the Jelling monuments (pp. 859–76).

This volume contains a myriad of papers that


will find themselves onto a whole range of reading lists. The breadth of subject matter, which has only been touched upon above, reflects James Graham-Campbell’s own broad range of interests and prolific output. As we have come to expect from tomes in Brill’s Northern World series, of which this is volume 58, the standard of proof-reading leaves something to be desired (as well as misspellings there are various items missing from the bibliographies of some of the papers), and the price is outrageous but doubtless many university and museum libraries will have purchased it and through them it will reach the readership it deserves. This is a fitting tribute to the sometimes irascible, often entertaining and always brilliant James Graham-Campbell.

University of St Andrews alex woolF

Wearmouth and Jarrow: Northumbrian monasteries in an historic landscape (University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, 2013). By Sam Turner, Sarah Semple and Alex Turner. 245 × 183 mm. xix + 244 pp. 124 b/w and colour illustrations, 3 tables. ISBN 978 1 9092 9113 3. Price £20.00.

To historians with different interests, the word ‘Jarrow’ means two very different things: Bede and his late seventh-century world, and the Jarrow March of 1936. It might seem that one of the high points of English cosmopolitan culture can have little in common with one of the low points of English working-class prosperity; but what they do at least have in common is the place. It is a merit of this attractive and beautifully illustrated book that it takes both themes seriously, and shows — in ways that are always fresh and sometimes unexpected — how they make a common inheritance for local people and a wider world. The contrast between Monkwearmouth and Jarrow when Bede knew them, and how they look today, is almost comical, but it makes that ancient past of devotion, scholarship and art even more important in helping residents to build a sense of place.

The starting-point, however, was the Bedan monasteries, the long campaign of excavation, study and publication by Rosemary Cramp, and the bid

for Monkwearmouth and Jarrow to be recognised as World Heritage Sites. The authors’ central aim was to extend knowledge by applying new scientific techniques, penetrating the ground and the historic fabric visually without invading them physically. Although they feel that their surveys `did not reveal as much new information about the monasteries as we had expected’, it does not look a meagre harvest as presented here; in particular, the recognition of a possible large boundary ditch around the monastic core at Jarrow has exciting implications.

Perhaps the outstanding section is the petrological analysis of the masonry in Benedict Biscop’s two churches, including spectacular stone-by-stone diagrams (figs 4.2, 4.17). This close study illuminates the builders’ techniques, including the background influence of woodworking seen, for instance, in the baluster-shafts turned in fine-grained sandstone quarried specially for the purpose. By far the most important source, however, was Roman ruins. The authors demonstrate that the Roman forts at Wallsend (Segedunum) and South Shields (Arbeia) were major sources of stone for both monasteries; thus the squared blocks that are such a notable feature of the east church at Jarrow seem to have been lifted ready-made from Arbeia. While it may be a matter for debate whether these Roman ruins were precious resources controlled by kings — rather than being, as I suspect myself, valueless until Benedict Biscop needed them — these discoveries (like Wilfrid’s works) make one suspect a purposeful recycling of the pagan Roman past for the Christian Roman present.

Beyond the petrological work, it is remarkable how far non-invasive scanning techniques can now enhance our knowledge of the early monastic buildings. Laser scans of the eroded but crucially important porch sculpture at Monkwearmouth (fig. 4.28) bring up features thought to have weathered away, as well as preserving a record of every minute detail for the future. Especially exciting is the possibility of a crypt, resembling Wilfrid’s at Hexham and Ripon, under the eastern church at Jarrow (fig. 6.1): in this case we must hope that future exploration will not be ‘non-invasive’.

If the impact of Roman monasticism transformed the region in the seventh century, that of coal-yards, industry, unemployment and civil defence transformed it in the twentieth. These competing

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heritages are explored in a fascinating chapter on public perceptions, drawing on interviews by Sophie Laidler. It emerges that, while visitors and certain groups of residents are well informed about the monastic phase, the industrial heritage is (unsurprisingly) more real to the local community as a whole. Therein lies a dilemma: in cleaning and ‘sanitising’ the Anglo-Saxon monuments, is there a danger of dislocating them from the more recent landscapes in which, as parish churches, they have had a focal place? More hopefully, as the authors suggest, ‘public engagement and knowledge may be strengthened by taking account of the ways in which the local perceptions of Wearmouth and Jarrow weave between the seventh- and twenty-first centuries’.

Sadly, the World Heritage Site application was rejected (at least this time round) while the book was in press. Even so, the campaign has been amply justified by the heightened awareness of historic Tyne and Wear, both locally and nationally, that has been achieved in the process. This book is a central part of that achievement, and it deserves to be widely read.

The Queen’s College, Oxford John blair

Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages c. AD 600–1150. A comparative archaeology (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013). By Christopher Loveluck. 252 × 184 mm. 488 pp. 45 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 1070 3763 2. Price £75.00.

Christopher Loveluck’s magisterial survey of the emergence of medieval Europe from its origins in the fading Roman Empire is a solid contribution to the scholarship of the period. At its most reductive, it offers a comprehensive overview of the early medieval archaeology of small and larger settlements, peasants and elites, and of commercial enterprise across that area of north-west Europe now included in five modern European countries: France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and England.

More interesting, though, is Loveluck’s approach. He locates his argument firmly in the increasingly mainstream criticism of ‘unilinear views of fixed trajectories for social change’ (p. 6) that explain

social change in north-west Europe across the half millennium a.d. from c. 600 to c. 1100 in simplistic ‘top-down’ models as a process driven by immigrant, militarised elites. Instead he adopts the view that is gradually gathering traction across the discipline that free peasant producers, both poorer and wealthier, were themselves a power-base that enabled their active participation in large-scale political, social, economic and cultural change. Loveluck’s aim is explicitly framed in the terms: to explore ‘how the power and intentions of elites were confronted by the aspirations and actions of the diverse rural peasantry’ (p. 4).

Having established both the geographic scope and the premises of his argument, Loveluck proceeds to discuss his methodological approach. He focuses on archaeology as a source in its own right, asking what the material evidence actually says rather than attempting to fit it into a narrative derived from early documents whose purpose was not to offer as straightforward an account of events as possible, but to use them to drive particular political or religious agendas. The archaeology, he suggests, can be used to ‘provide a broad context into which exceptional insights from textual sources can be placed’ (p. 3).

Loveluck divides his chosen period into two parts: that of the Merovingian and Carolingian ascendancy between about 600 and 900, and that of the Vikings and Angevins between 900 and 1150. Within those periods, he takes traditional themes and, moving through a critique of the historiography of each, goes on to develop his argument of complex patterns of social change in which different social, political and religious groupings, endogenous and exogenous influences, time and tradition all play a part. Within each chapter, that general proposition is exemplified and anchored in detailed evidence from specific sites. The approach means that it is possible to present the argument in terms of a range of different constituencies: small and large farming communities, those wielding political leadership and authority, and the mercantile populations of towns and ports.

Loveluck’s conclusions should provide a rich seam for future research. He suggests that the dynamic tension between peasants, traders and aristocracy that offered such a rich stimulus to political, economic and social changes between the


seventh and ninth centuries gave way in the tenth and eleventh centuries to social dominance by urban and other mercantile elites. In the end, he concludes ‘the tragedy for the rural peasantries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was that they lost many of their freedoms, whereas the wealth and rights of urban patricians were to increase’ (p. 367). Herein, perhaps, lies the Achilles heel of the proposition — it will be important for subsequent researchers to avoid leaping across the narrow gap between that conclusion and teleological arguments that aim to locate the origins of western capitalism in those developments.

This book is one of a number of substantial recent publications which experiment with new ‘grand theories’ to explain the early medieval world. They all acknowledge, implicitly or explicitly, that existing models for the emergence of Anglo-Saxon England — in which early medieval cultural change is principally explained in terms of migration of elite warbands from north-west Europe — have been so challenged by recent archaeological, ecological and linguistic research that they can no longer hold. Scholars of early medieval Europe are in for a thrilling, almost certainly bumpy, ride over the next few years in which debates about discourses and evidence are likely to be more energetic, stimulating and challenging than they have been since, perhaps, the late nineteenth century. This book will be at the heart of those discussions.

University of Cambridge susan oosthuizen

Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2013). Edited by Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Brian W. Schneider. 234 × 156 mm. 318 pp. 10 b/w illustrations, 3 tables, 1 map. ISBN 978 1 8438 3877 7. Price £60.00.

This is one of two volumes to arise directly from the MANCASS Easter conference of 2006. The papers gathered here focus on the exercise, display and mechanisms of royal authority in Anglo-Saxon England and provide some very welcome insights and new perspectives on the subject of early medieval kingship in England. After an introduction by Ann Williams, Simon Keynes

works through the diplomatic material in careful detail, exploring in particular the processes that lay behind the drawing up of royal diplomas. Alexander Rumble pulls together the evidence for the extent of Anglo-Saxon documentation, positing (p. 196) ‘the existence of local royal archive-repositories in various Anglo-Saxon administrative centres’, but finding insufficient support for the notion ‘of a sophisticated central registry of land title’. Three contributions focus especially on Anglo-Saxon law codes: Andrew Rabin takes the Anglo-Saxon witness as his text, through which to explore notions of legal authority; Ryan Lavelle, focusing on Ine’s laws, assesses the practical and economic realities of provisioning an itinerant king; and Alaric Trousdale examines the delegation of power to local potentates, as evidenced in particular by the tenth-century codes of Edmund. While analysis of written texts predominates, Carole Hough and Barbara Yorke, respectively, also bring onomastic and archaeological data to bear on questions relating to such matters as the enactment and the display of royal power.

It is a wide-ranging volume with much that will appeal to readers of Landscape History. Several chapters are likely to be of particular interest, most obviously those by Hough and Yorke. The former emphasises the conceptual difference between the person of the king and the office of kingship as expressed in legal codes, noting that kings who make the laws are very rarely named personally in the texts, while references to ‘the king’ are frequent. Building on this observation, she suggests ways of using toponymic corpora to detect instances of the law in practice, arguing that many instances of OE cyning ‘king’, in charter bounds and place-names, might have arisen as references to the office of kingship rather than to an individual king, perhaps reflecting the forfeiture of land in compensation for breaches of the law. Yorke’s analysis of the different modes of kingly mortuary practice through the Anglo-Saxon period brings together archaeological and documentary sources, placing the investigation of elite burial into clear perspective. She provides a chronological framework, relating it in part to wider social changes, and is also able to identify some regional variation. In examining the fiscal ramifications of Ine’s laws and the practicalities of food render,

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Lavelle’s chapter also has important implications for our understanding of the organisation of the landscape, while Keynes’s analysis of the personnel and processes involved in royal assemblies is helpfully informative for the study of the venues at which such events took place.

This is a thoroughly engaging book, exploring different aspects of royal power in force. If there is cause for slight disappointment, it is the knowledge that papers from the 2006 conference dealing with the insecurity, reduction or breakdown of royal power have been published separately. While there are no doubt sound academic and commercial reasons for this, it leaves the reader eager for more. Perhaps that is no bad thing, but it is a shame to separate analyses of royal weakness from those of royal strength in this way — it seems unlikely that the perception and reality of strong and weak kingship can always be straightforwardly disentangled. A longer volume might also have made the imbalance in the length of contributions less stark. At 165 pages, Keynes’s chapter (pp. 17–182) constitutes, with its appendices, a very sizable part of the whole volume. There is no doubting its worth, however, and it will not detract from the excellence of some of the shorter contributions. The book contains a good deal of important analysis and will certainly be of value to anyone with research interests in early medieval history and Anglo-Saxon landscape.

University of Nottingham John baker

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). By Sarah Semple. 246 × 171 mm. 352 pp. 55 b/w and colour illustrations. ISBN 978 0 1996 8310 9. Price £85.00.

This volume, based on Sarah Semple’s doctoral research, examines how the communities of Anglo-Saxon England perceived and used prehistoric monuments between a.d. 400 and a.d. 1100. The key thesis is that this was knowing and intentional, and that funerary reuse formed only one part of this behaviour.

The volume is well structured, on a part-thematic and part-chronological basis. After an initial chapter that reviews previous work in the field, Chapter 2

explores regional variation in the reuse of prehistoric monuments for burial in the period up to a.d. 800. Important here is the complexity of practice, and the existence of regional variation (explored through case study areas in East Yorkshire, north Wiltshire and West Sussex), as well as the fact that this practice is also found throughout north-west Europe and in Western Britain and Ireland (of which there is a useful review). Semple therefore firmly situates this reuse in both localised and cultural/political practices, and also notes interesting chronological shifts in practice, including a clear seventh-century interest in reactivating ‘ancestral’ claims to land and territories at a time of rapid political development. (These might now be possible to refine further, with more recent major publications on Anglo-Saxon chronology.) Although there is some slight awkwardness where Semple tries to integrate both historical and archaeological approaches to this period when discussing ethnicity, this chapter convincingly argues that this practice was not just important for the elite, but played a key role in the development and maintenance of more locally based identities.

Chapter 3 focuses on pre-Christian attitudes to the prehistoric, and draws on a variety of evidence including place-names to explore this. Clearly the most tentative chapter of the book, this is nevertheless argued carefully and critically to offer some interesting material on non-funerary use of prehistoric monuments. Such attitudes are further explored and developed in Chapter 4, which examines relations between churches and prehistoric monuments. Again, the evidence is carefully collected and examined (with further details of the relevant sites given in appendices). Semple notes that overall there is little evidence for the ‘conversion’ of monuments into Christian sites, in contrast to the mass of evidence for the reuse of Roman sites, for which a useful review of the evidence is presented.

Chapter 5 examines the literary and place-name evidence for prehistoric monuments in the mid- to later Saxon period, drawing on evidence from wills, laws, poetry, stories, charters and annals. Semple notes changes through this period, whereby ancient features were clearly recognised and accepted as ancient places, but within an increasingly Christianised response. This culminates in barrows


in particular becoming seen as suitable places for execution and deviant burial in the later Anglo-Saxon period. This theme is further explored in Chapter 6, where she notes the increasing association of old barrows with heathenism and evil, and then hell and damnation. Of twenty-seven known execution sites, Semple documents that thirteen were associated with mounds or barrows (of varying dates), eight with linear earthworks and three with hillforts. These monuments were being revived as places for theatrical displays of elite power, aimed at reinforcing mechanisms of state, particularly judicial power. Mounds were also preferred as places of Late Saxon assembly, and prehistoric sites sometimes re-employed as estate centres or palaces.

This is thus a book that emphasises localised responses and the changing relations with prehistoric monuments through time. It uses data and evidence well and carefully, and draws on a very broad range of that evidence in exploring those themes. Aside from a couple of minor editorial slips, it is very well produced, and will define the terms of the debate for some time to come.

University of Cambridge sam lucy

The Archaeology of Japan: from the earliest rice farming villages to the rise of the state (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013). By Koji Mizoguchi. 279 × 216 mm. 392 pp. 94 b/w illustrations, 3 tables. ISBN 978 0 5218 8490 7. Price £75.00.

When thinking of the archaeology of Japan, English speakers are likely to be aware of its earlier prehistoric archaeology; in particular the archaeology of the Jomon period, a time of affluent hunter-gatherers with an elaborate ceramic tradition of flame-motif ceramic vessels and other-worldly figurines, that bears easy comparison to the Mesolithic archaeology of Denmark and Scandinavia, or the so-called complex hunter-gatherer societies of the north-west coast of North America. The later archaeology of Japan, however, is as rich and deserving of attention. Between 900 b.c. and a.d. 700 the archaeological record of the Yayoi and Kofun periods in Japan presents evidence for the transition from the first full take-up of rice

agriculture in village communities through to the rise of a state civilisation in which the individual, in their own right, was the primary point of recognition and interaction with the state itself. This is the period covered by Koji Mizoguchi in this new edition to the Cambridge World Archaeology series.

Readers of Mizoguchi’s earlier publications will not be surprised to learn that this book takes an explicitly theoretical approach drawing its inspiration from the work of post-processual archaeologists, on the one hand, and their focus on the active use of material culture, and the German systems theorist Niklas Luhman, on the other, whose focus on evolving systems of communication (fields of discourse) provides the theoretical spine of this volume. This theoretical perspective is informed in detail by a wealth of excavated evidence with particular emphasis given to the construction of landscapes and the material culture of burial. In a larger context still, Mizoguchi situates his narrative in terms of the driving forces that informed Japan’s own historical understanding of its place and action in the world from its opening-up in the Meiji period from the 1860s, through Japan’s imperial project in the mid-twentieth century, to the new, perhaps more inwardly looking, narrative of today. In so doing, he also comments on the potential role of the archaeological record of rice agriculture of the Yayoi period in the definition of what it is to be Japanese and the origins of the Imperial household in the creation and development of the great keyhole-shaped tombs of the Kofun period.

Inevitably, perhaps, this highly detailed interplay between theory and evidence means that this book requires real concentration to read and digest and, whilst the book is comprehensively illustrated with line drawings of artefacts, large-scale plans of excavated settlements and tombs, and overlay maps, it is a pity that there are no photographs of objects or sites themselves for those not familiar with Japanese archaeological materials at first hand.

In very simple terms, Mizoguchi’s narrative relates a process in which the annual rhythms of rice agriculture in paddy fields created a social life of intra-community dependency and equality based on kin groupings, leading to the development of increasingly elaborated exchanges of ceramic and metal material items, maintained by a system of ritual communications through burial that

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masked the growing differences within and between communities by use of a rhetoric of common purpose and togetherness.

Through this trajectory of historical and social change we can see that the process of Japanese state formation is also the driver of significant landscape developments at varying scales from the early Yayoi villages with their regular spatial structure of house clusters reflecting clan-type sodalities that extended across villages, to later Yayoi settlements in which certain residential communities grew in size to become effective central places in a region controlling the flow of goods and people, and finally on to the end of the Kofun period by which time one region had become the pre-eminent locus for development of a state centre. Mizoguchi explores this transformation of spatial relationships through the use of social network analysis, modelling competing places (villages or regions) as nodes with communications evidenced by the flow of material goods between them at the edges. The growth of certain villages during the Yayoi, or the Kinki Core Region during the Kofun period can be measured and accounted for by the relative centrality of their topological relations as reflected in the number and spread of connections to other settlements or regions.

The one problem that I can see with such a social network approach is that it presumes that all nodes are potentially equal points on a uniform setting. It is the nature of the connections, the edges between them, that affects change. It would be useful to consider, however, how the particularities of a particular place in a landscape of real variations as certainly existed in Japan may have facilitated growth in population and crop returns or access to specific resources for exchange. Here the study of topological relations between specific geographical places does not necessarily reveal the real topographical possibilities of any particular place.

Unquestionably, this book is a significant addition to our understanding of the archaeology of Japan. I might go further, however, and suggest that the extraordinary range and detail of archaeological evidence generated by the development-led archaeology of Japan during its economic boom of the 1960s to 1990s, in full use here by Mizoguchi, has facilitated a study that should be one of the

core archaeological case studies for students of state formation in general.

University of Liverpool anthony sinclair

Sacred Sites and Holy Places (Brepols, Turnhout, 2013). Edited by S. W. Nordeide and S. Brink. 156 × 234 mm. xii+282 pp. 63 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 2 5035 4100 6. Price €80.00.

This edited volume offers a wide-ranging discussion of sacred places and landscapes; spanning the last centuries b.c. to the eighteenth century, the editors juxtapose case studies from Nordic regions with examples from Greece and Europe. As the Introduction by Nordeide outlines, the aim of the volume is to interrogate holiness in the landscape: exploring how humans ‘make’ and ‘remake’ the sacred. The nine papers that follow profile how various religions have ‘co-influenced’ people and landscapes. Authors draw on place-name evidence, historical sources and archaeology in the hunt for comparative and contrasting processes of creating the sacred.

In the first four contributions, complementary perspectives are offered on the pre-Christian landscapes of Scandinavia. Stefan Brink in ‘Myth and ritual in Pre-Christian Scandinavian landscape’ describes a natural and numinous pre-Christian landscape. ‘Landscapes as sacroscapes’, by Veikko Anttonen, precedes Brink’s paper but expands this idea. Anttonen uses toponyms in Finland to explore the spatial distinctions and dimensions of a mytho-geographic perspective. Specific re-source zones and how they were accessed or encountered are argued to shape concepts of the sacred in prehistoric and medieval Finland. The wilderness, transitions and edges are argued to become significant when cross-cut and the importance of the dead as means of creating social order for communities is also highlighted. Charlotte Fabech and Ulf Näsman follow with an expansive review of the Scandinavian pre-Christian landscape. Here the numinous landscape is dissected and reconstructed, revealing how central place complexes were integrated with more expansive sacred landscapes — one is reminded of


the Irish evidence for late prehistoric royal sites, situated within extensive ‘mythic’ landscapes with multi-period activity (e.g. Navan, County Armagh). Concurring with both Anttonen and Brink, these authors argue that Christianity did not bring these ‘spiritually charged’ terrains to an abrupt end, but that slow processes of hybridisation resulted in incremental changes which allowed ‘old’ places to be re-worked and ‘new’ foci added. Anttonen’s paper adds a useful reminder that sometimes sacred spaces were appropriated within a Christianised landscape as non-evangelised and even harmful locales. This concept of ‘transitative’ landscapes also features in Asgeir Svestad’s exploration of the changing nature of pre-Christian and Christian Sámi graves.

The volume turns to the Classical world with two papers on Greece. Gullög Nordquist reviews the numinous world of pre-Christian Greece, a landscape imbued with power and layered with meaning and myth. Useful analogies can be found here in the discussion of large sanctuaries which contained spaces reserved for ‘different functions and levels of holiness’ and the use of sacred roads or processional routes for regular attendance as sanctuaries and special places. The Christianisation of this world is taken up by Bente Kiilerich in a discussion of the Acropolis. Here the traditional viewpoints of Christian iconoclastic destruction are critically appraised and we are asked to consider instead the gradual embedding of new values into the ancient landscape via the Christian takeover of antique forms. Moving to the twelfth century, Kurt Villads Jensen discusses the impacts of the Christian Crusades on the landscape, introducing ideas of how religious conflict can reshape the sacred. Notable here is the emphasis on how changes in soundscape can alter the sacred nature of places and landscapes. Christianising impacts are reviewed by Torstein Jørgensen in relation to Norwegian early medieval provincial laws and finally Zoë Opać explores late medieval urban theatre in Prague revealing a new sacred geography key to human religious experience and elite theatre.

Mapping sacred landscapes is not an easy under-taking, but these papers offer some rich insights into how we might go about deconstructing and understanding complex and ambivalent relationships between people, nature and the sacred. The addition of papers on Greek as well as Crusader landscapes

and late medieval cityscapes is refreshing, as well as the long time-depth, but the Introduction could have linked these with a more robust and cohesive narrative. Throughout, authors emphasise the slow and complex dialogues of change created by the conversion. Rather than seeing ‘sacroscapes’ as static, these papers encourage us to view them as constantly changing, affected by human interaction and engagement: as experiential terrains that embodied multiple sets of sacred values. They offer insight in to how we might investigate the development of sacred landscapes over time, identifying how special places emerge through human interactions and activities, and how multiple layers of meaning, memory and myth accrue. Such emotional palimpsests could be affected by political and religious change but not necessarily eliminated; in these papers at least, the creation of sacred landscapes often involved complex appropriation and reshaping of ideas about place to serve new intellectual agendas.

University of Durham sarah semple

The Power of Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Studies in European Urban History 30, Brepols, Turnhout, 2013). Edited by Marc Boone and Martha C. Howell. 178 – 254 mm. vi + 215 pp. 23 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 2 5035 4784 8. Price € 77.00.

The series on Studies in European Urban History (a.d. 1100–1800), of which this volume is a part, emerged from a project on ‘City and Society in the Low Countries (a.d. c. 1200–c. 1850)’. This context explains the empirical focus of most of the papers in this collection, edited by Marc Boone and Martha Howell, though as the subtitle indicates, the geographical compass includes Italy, not just northern France and the Low Countries. The comparative potential of the volume, allowing readers to look across examples from the ‘foggy north’ to the ‘sunny south’, is one of its strengths, and might have been worth further reflection in the editors’ introduction. They do comment (p. 3) on the ‘striking similarities between Italy and the North with regard to the meanings space acquired,

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in the way it was constructed, and in the power it bequeathed’, but it is left largely to the reader to formulate these connections for themselves through the various individual case-studies presented by the papers in the volume, seven of which are in English and six of which are in French. Many of the papers range across different permutations of ‘power’ and ‘space’, although some of the individual contributions are confined to individual towns and cities, including Naples, Venice, Lille, Brussels, Antwerp, Paris and Amsterdam, rather than taking a more regional approach.

Boone and Howell attempt in the Introduction to set out some conceptual parameters for the volume, and questions of ‘space’. They admit that they were ‘inspired by the new interest in social space engendered by Lefebvre’s work’, especially his thinking on the ‘production of space’ (p. 2), but they also identify the influence of others, notably Pirenne. Their aim, they say, is to focus ‘exclusively on the politics of space, seeking to reveal how space produced, constrained, and defined power’ in urban settings (p. 3). Indeed this volume is one of a number of recent similar collections addressing the theme of ‘space’, like Meredith Cohen and Fanny Madeline’s edited collection on Space in the Medieval West (Ashgate, 2014) and Julian Weiss and Sarah Salih’s Locating the Middle Ages. The spaces and places of medieval culture (King’s College London, 2012).

What is it about space? Why this desire to look at the medieval world spatially? In part these volumes, including The Power of Space, reflect a broader ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, influenced by critical theory, but there is a curious absence in much of what is being written by historians in dealing with space, and that is the contributions made by both geographers and archaeologists, for both are disciplines that can lay particular claim to thinking critically about space. The Power of Space, looking through the various and sometimes voluminous footnotes to the individual contributions, is no different in this regard, with little engagement with the likes of Chris Tilley, Tim Ingold, John Wiley, Denis Cosgrove, and others, who have helped us to rethink one of the recurring but almost silenced themes of the papers included in The Power of Space — the landscape itself. It is as if the power of space — as a topic — has become all consuming, like space itself, in histories of places. So space currently dominates intellectual discourse,

for some historians at least, and by neglecting ‘landscape’, and the critical engagements on it that have been so influential in the Anglophone world in recent decades, there is a danger that ‘space’ remains narrowly conceptualised by historians, who instead defer to fairly abstract discussions influenced by those following the ideas of Lefebvre. But there is more to space than Lefebvre.

It may be that something gets lost in translation when it comes to ‘space’. Geographers such as Yi Fu Tuan and Tim Unwin, to name but two, have spent many years debating the subtleties of ‘space’, as distinct from ‘place’. Again, it seems that ‘space’ dominates the discussions in history, yet often, as with this particular volume, it is place that is more the true focus of the papers, rather than the more abstract ‘space’. Why is place so overlooked? Is it because it is more problematic as an idea across languages, between French and English, for example, compared with ‘space’? Thinking more about place — of where things happen and why — rather than across space, seems to be more the substance of the papers here. For example in the very interesting and rich paper by Peter Arnade on Antwerp and the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, it is the very place of Antwerp in the wider world, as much as its spatial connections and networks, that can help understand the special relationship between the city and the atlas and those who produced it.

So, reading this volume of papers raises some important questions about the power of space, but not so much in the ways the authors perhaps intended, but rather in highlighting the current preoccupation with ‘space’ and the power it seems to hold over historians of the medieval world.

Queen’s University, Belfast keith d. lilley

East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, 2013). Edited by David Bates and Robert Liddiard. 244 × 172 mm. 363 pp. 99 b/w maps, figures, illustrations. ISBN 978 1 8438 3846 3. Price £60.00.

Invited to review East Anglia and its North Sea World, this reviewer must admit to initial scepticism as to whether ‘landscape’ would feature prominently,


if at all. As a starting point it was a view hardly dissipated by the second chapter — penned by Tom Williamson, one of our leading landscape historians — where the term was encountered only sparsely, and then largely in the context of Dutch landscape painting. Marine-oriented studies are of course not about landscapes, but about cultural contacts and influence, trade and commerce, and exploitation patterns. Assessed from this perspective, the volume which had its genesis in a three-day conference held at Norwich in 2010 succeeds admirably in presenting a wide-ranging set of synthetical academic papers, eighteen in number. They are diverse in their subject matter, geography and timespan, and, with perhaps only one or two exceptions (for this reader) informative and absorbing. The volume is attractively produced, the illustrations have in almost all instances reproduced well, the text has been well edited and proof-read, and the price by current standards is on the high side but not exorbitant.

In such a short review it is impossible to do justice to all the papers, so here the reviewer can only pick out a few that particularly appealed to him. Christopher Scull contrasts seventh- and eighth-century settlements at Ipswich, focusing on the cemeteries of the former, and positing that in the seventh century there would have been stronger outward-looking links across the North Sea than at a later date. His paper reveals too, perhaps inadvertently, the value of focusing archaeological effort intensively on selected settlements. Brian Ayres in his consideration of material culture is keen to make the point that archaeology can contribute significantly to medieval studies well beyond simply generating examples to illustrate the historical record. Focusing on ships, coastal towns, sea defences, he even tackles social identity in a paper that is a pleasure to read. Stephen Heywood revisits the post-Conquest round-towered churches of East Anglia and other countries bordering the North and Baltic Seas and argues persuasively that stone church-building was largely a Norman introduction. Richard Plant is more specific in his consideration of several important Romanesque churches — Bury St Edmunds, Ely and Peterborough — claiming that they were inspired by architectural traditions within the Holy Roman Empire.

Six contributions address one of the major themes of the marine environment, trade. Two

papers — by Gareth Williams and Rory Naismith — examine coinage in East Anglia at different times in the pre-Conquest era. Aleksander Pluskowski looks at the social context of fur use in East Anglia from the late Saxon era, focusing particularly on the warrens that proliferated from the twelfth century with the emphasis initially on meat production and only later on the provision of fur; this provides a contrast with pre-Christian Scandinavia. Economic relations between Flanders and East Anglia in the Anglo-Norman era described by Eljas Oksanen go some way towards suggesting a strong trade network around the North Sea. But there exists a broader economic zone stretching into Lincolnshire, and the emphasis is on riverine transport links; from this Flanders and East Anglia were twinned by their landscapes and the waterways that penetrated them. The fluctuating fortunes of three major ports of the Middle Ages — Lynn, Great Yarmouth and Ipswich — are considered by Wendy Childs, and she also alludes to less definable influences from the Continent on English industry.

Gradually emerging from the papers is an impression that there is no real agreement (or acceptance) as to precisely what constitutes the North Sea World, the common glue that should hold this volume together. Several authors including Williamson and Robert Liddiard attempt to define it, but some of the contributors make attempts to disguise the fact that their examples are drawn from a much wider region — in David King’s commentary on medieval art in Norfolk, for instance, from virtually the whole of Western Europe. Other contributions do not seem to fit well into the concept of the North Sea World. Interesting though that element of the second crusade known as the 1147 expedition to Lisbon may be in itself, the link to East Anglia postulated by Charles West seems rather tenuous. And Anna Agnarsdóttir’s summary of fishing and trade around Iceland in the fifteenth century, when the East Anglian ports were only part of a geographically wider pattern of exploitation by English seamen and merchants, is less the North Sea, more the broader Atlantic. Illuminating though these contributions are, the case for a North Sea World in which East Anglia played a prominent role is not really assisted by such a diffusive approach. Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust bob silvester

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The Silk Roads of the Northern Tibetan Plateau during the Early Middle Ages (from the Han to Tang Dynasty) as Reconstructed from Archaeological and Written Sources (British Archaeological Reports International Series 2521, Oxford, 2013). By Tao Tong. 297 × 210 mm. xi + 195 pp. 223 b/w illustrations, 7 tables, 6 maps. ISBN 978 1 4073 1139 5. Price £34.00.

This work is primarily based on the analysis of the excavation of Tibetan (Tuyuhun-Tubo) graves at Dulan and Delingha. Located on the Tibetan plateau, in the modern-day province of Qinghai in north-western China, the burials date from the fifth to the eighth centuries c.e., and contained a wide range of material, such as textiles, gold and silver objects, and coffin paintings, etc.

There is a short introduction to the natural environment of the Northern Tibetan Plateau (Chapter 2), although this is very brief (three pages), under-referenced, and could have been expanded to provide a better context for the later discussions. In particular, a little more information on the topography and hydrology of the region would have helped to frame the later discussions of settlement and routes.

It is followed by a very useful review of the historical evidence for routes and activities in the region from Chinese sources (Chapter 3). This will be very useful to western scholars less familiar with sources and includes discussions of issues such as military actions, mountain routes, the travels of monks, intermarriage, regional polities, and trade goods.

The following chapters (4–6) review the archae-ological evidence in chronological order: the Han and Jin periods (third century b.c. to third century a.d.), the early Tuyuhun period (fourth to mid-seventh century a.d.) and the Tubo period (or the later Tuyuhun period: mid-seventh to eighth century a.d.). These chapters are very successful in pulling together a range of information, primarily focused on the cemeteries and the exceptional range of material culture in the burials. This includes some internationally significant material, such as the painted wooden coffins, terracotta figurines, metalwork, wooden slips with Tibetan inscriptions, and silk textiles (some with Chinese inscriptions). The range and quality of the material is very impressive. However, it is unfortunate that the

illustrations are only in black and white (particularly problematic for the silks and the painted coffins) and generally the reproduction of the images is rather poor: they are often too small and sometimes of very poor quality (e.g. fig. 4.4.1). Nevertheless, this is a very useful collection of material, much of which has previously only been available in Chinese sources, and then often only in interim reports. The chapters also contain some very interesting and original contributions, in particular the discussion of regional interactions through the material culture evidence, and a very good review of the coffin painting as reflecting the cultural panorama of the region.

Less successful in these chapters is the handling of the settlement evidence. The discussion of the evidence of the city-sites is very brief and with little or no supporting illustrative material. The Han and Jin city-sites, for example, are covered in one and a half pages, with no illustrations, and with rather erratic descriptions. The discussion does not clearly present the scale of current knowledge or an understanding of layout, chronology, and so on. In part this reflects the paucity of archaeological work on many of these sites, or the interim nature of the fieldwork publications on them, but nevertheless this could have been more effectively presented.

The mapping throughout the volume is prob-lematic. The scale of the region is considerable: the Tibetan Plateau as a whole covers nearly three million square kilometres, and the study area of the northern region requires overview maps covering an area c. 400 × 400 km; on an A4 page this produces very cramped maps (e.g. fig. 4.2.1). This makes it difficult to explore the development of this important landscape. Settlement distribution, mapped against the topographic, hydrographic, climatic or ecological zones, is very difficult on the presented data. This is a shame, as the volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the region and could have pushed forward rather more our understanding of the development of landscapes of settlement and land use.

Overall, however, this is an important volume. The analysis of historical and archaeological evid-ence does provide a platform for exploring the Han, Jin, Tuyuhun and Tibetan development of the northern Tibetan Plateau. The material provides important insights into the complicated cultural dimensions and interactions along the Silk Roads


in this region, all of which contributed greatly to the shaping of medieval Tibetan culture.

University College, London tim williams

From the Deer to the Fox. The hunting transition and the landscape, 1600–1850 (University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, 2013). By Mandy de Belin. 171 × 248 mm. 176 pp. 26 b/w illustrations. 2 tables. ISBN 978 1 9092 9104 1. Price £14.99.

This meticulously researched and much-needed study explores the shift from deer- to fox-hunting from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century and its effects on the landscape of Northamptonshire. The principal aim is to interrogate the traditional primacy of landscape transformation as the main explanation for this change (i.e. increased enclosure, widespread loss of woodland and consequent decline in deer populations). De Belin hypothesises that the development of the hunting horse, that ‘supreme equine athlete’ (p. 142), was in fact the main cause, coupled with the fact that the resulting new type of hunting was more socially inclusive. The argument is, therefore, that the shift occurred not due to environmental necessity but to fashion and cultural change, and de Belin executes it with skill. Using cartographic analysis she demonstrates a lack of evidence in Northamptonshire for significant decimation of woodland before 1850, by which time fox-hunting was already established as the preferred country sport. Deer numbers are also shown to have recovered within fifty or sixty years of the well-known mid-seventeenth-century depredations, a notable (and deliberate) decline in their population only coming, again, in the later nineteenth century. Thus the traditional account is turned on its head; although the hunting transition was embedded in the landscape, this was ‘in a different way to that generally described’ (p. 142). From the Deer to the Fox is therefore a significant work in landscape historiography generally and for historians of hunting landscapes in particular, not least because it questions the received wisdoms derived from nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars and their predecessors, which persist especially in the latter relatively recent sub-field.

As well as employing seventeenth- to nineteenth-century maps, the author’s methodology includes analysis of literary and administrative written sources, and she shows dexterity with both. In addition, the book contains concise and know-ledgeable explications of medieval and early modern hunting methods, as well as woodland management — e.g. coppicing — that will serve as a useful introduction to readers new to those subjects. The chapters, each of which ends with a useful concluding section, include ‘the landscape of deer hunting’ and ‘the landscape of foxhunting’, which both offer new insights, while the chapter on ‘horses and hunting’ provides a novel take on the subject. Here de Belin demonstrates that ‘if early hunting was about the hound, then later hunting, and particularly foxhunting, was about the horse’ (p. 105) — a premise that has seemingly escaped most of us who write on medieval hunting — and that this shift had a profound effect on the landscapes in which the activity took place. She also highlights the pivotal cultural role played by horse-racing from the late seventeenth century, a sport which through selective breeding produced the English thoroughbred, an experiment that prompted similar ‘improvements’ in other species, for example faster foxhounds, which ultimately led to yet swifter horses. Thus, From the Deer to the Fox also enhances the recent corpus of works on the significant role of animals in cultural history and their effects on landscape modification.

Also worthy of note is the focus on periods often neglected in hunting histories (perhaps because of the medieval/deer hunting and later early modern/foxhunting divide); for example the nation-wide restraints on deer-hunting in the reign of Charles ii (1660–85).

From the Deer to the Fox results from de Belin’s doctoral study, completed at the Centre for English Local History (University of Leicester), and in a sense its regional focus places it in a traditional mould. However, her findings are profound and wide-ranging. As she points out (p. 4), the significant changes in hunting practices in the early modern period deserve attention because the era’s landscape history has traditionally been considered almost exclusively in economic terms, focusing on enclosure and agricultural improvement. The book therefore brings the study of early modern (hunting)

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landscapes into step with what has recently been achieved regarding the hunting spaces of the Middle Ages, which, as the subject of a plethora of recent studies at both regional and national levels, have been more successfully theorised than their later counterparts.

To conclude, there is much to praise and little to complain about here — apart from the rather blurry lower image on the front cover — and hopefully this work will inspire similar regional studies. Such endeavours would enhance our knowledge not just of the fate of forests and parks in the post-medieval period, but also of early modern socio-cultural changes in their own right, and indeed how those changes affected — and were affected by — the landscape.

University of Chichester amanda richardson

The Woods of Ireland. A history, 700–1800 (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2014). By Nigel Everett. 240 × 160 mm. 344 pp. 12 b/w figures, 27 colour plates, 1 table. ISBN 978 1 8468 2505 7. Price €45.00.

This is a scholarly, well-researched work that examines the history of Irish woodland against the backdrop of political upheaval and bias. It is not for the faint-hearted and, indeed, occasional summaries throughout would have been welcome, although the subject matter is clarified by well-chosen chapter headings and summarised in the concluding chapter. A useful exercise is that each chapter sets its story against the relevant events regarding woodland extraction or preservation taking place in England. The book traces the fortunes of Irish woodland against the vicissitudes of political history but contemporary accounts are, to say the least, biased in favour of either the native Irish or the English landowner, the Catholic or the Protestant. Given such political and cultural bias — even hatred —, facts are hard to come by and the author attempts to assess these in difficult circumstances. For much of history, Irish woodlands were regarded by the English as primitive fastnesses offering shelter to wild Irish rebels and also conducive to ‘roguery, depression, damp and poverty’ (as expressed by John Evelyn in his Sylva, published in 1729). Few

accounts are without bias, distorting the amount of woodland that survived timber extraction, iron working, and so on. Thus Elizabeth i has traditionally been blamed for an arboreal ‘holocaust’, military forces for clearing swathes of woodland and rapacious English landowners for continued exploitation, themselves ‘ruling by oppression rather than law’ (p. 93). Everett examines, as far as he is able and in considerable detail, the evidence for such claims and, in later centuries, the effect of successive rulings to increase plantations and conserve woodlands put forward by estate owners and, subsequently, by governments. The influence is rarely black or white: inevitably, conflicts continued to arise throughout Irish hist ory. In the seventeenth century a ‘central question, clearly, was the extent to which Ireland should be regarded primarily as a discrete, steadily developing, kingdom or a convenient source of raw materials, and readily made fortunes, for British interests’ (p. 11), but in the rebellions of the 1640s rival commanders on both sides emphasised the importance of protecting Irish woodlands from ‘destruction and desolation’ (p. 133). The promotion of woodland planting increased in the later seventeenth century, partly to ensure the economic viability of the timber trade, but was also to be influenced by cultural forces, especially as views of what constituted ‘picturesque’ or ‘sublime’ landscapes took hold in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Paintings and engravings from these later centuries express appreciative views of wooded landscapes and well-wooded estates. For once, both sides were in agreement over the desired objectives if not in the initial causes of decline and were not without continued bias: ‘Irish “patriots” typically chose to regard their country’s mounting deficit in timber, not so much as an inevitable consequence of globalization, than a lamentable expression of inadequate nationhood’ (p. 198) while extensive planting was also readily envisaged ‘as an expression of modern, largely Protestant, civility’ (p. 201) — hostility continued to underlie any discussion of Irish woodlands. Arthur Young, the leading English agriculturalist, made an extensive tour of Ireland between 1776 and 1779 and his descriptions provide an insight into the state of Ireland’s woodlands, praising some estate owners for their ‘silvicultural performance’ (p. 227). (Such a view was not shared


by all — ‘Capabilty’ Brown’s influence on some estate owners in England and Wales was denounced by the architect William Chambers in 1773 as sacrificing old plantations to ‘make way for … a few American weeds’: p. 230).

Woodland and national culture remained inextricably intertwined. The author concludes that ‘According to well-honed nationalist traditions emerging in earnest in the eighteenth century, the uprooting of Irish culture rising from the English conquest was fully reflected in the fate of the country’s woodlands’ giving rise to the hope that independence might promote ‘a rapid resurgence of the nation’s woods, together with its literature, music, most cherished customs, and, indeed, essential national character’ (p. 279). But as private landowners diminished in power, with many of their traditional activities passing to central government, woodland resources continued to steadily diminish despite nationalists advocating planting and preservation: independent Ireland largely ignored their views until the second half of the twentieth century.

This is a thorough and penetrating study, if not an ‘easy’ read, and is beautifully illustrated with some stunning photographs and plates.

University of Birmingham della hooke

The Architecture of Pleasure. British Amusement Parks, 1900–1939 (Ashgate, Guildford, 2013). By Josephine Kane. 244 × 172 mm. 284 pp. 110 b/w and 4 colour illustrations. ISBN 978 1 4094 1074 4. Price £58.50.

In September 2013, Thanet District Council became sole owner of the remaining buildings and site of Dreamland, Margate, one of the two main subjects of study in Josephine Kane’s thoroughly documented and intellectually stimulating study of amusement parks. Dreamland has significant listed structures, including the animal cages in a romantic garden setting from the time of the circus owner ‘Lord’ George Sanger in the 1880s, and the fire-damaged remains of Britain’s oldest surviving Scenic Railway of 1920. Enough of the listed timber structure survived to prohibit an intended redevelopment as a retail park, while the

listed cinema and entertainment complex by the architects Leathart and Granger of 1934 added to the conservation argument. Backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund and other funding, Dreamland is now being restored to working order, incorporating a living museum of historic rides, complementing the Turner Contemporary Gallery at one end of the town with popular culture at the other.

This is a story as bizarre as many of those told in Kane’s study of the rise and fall of the Amusement Park, beginning as a somewhat anarchic Edwardian adoption of American rides and attractions, linked to the temporary installations of exhibitions such as the Franco-British at White City in 1908, with its Flip-Flap and big wheel. The 1930s brought a significant social shift in style, seen by many commentators as a return to greater order and control. Kane explores the different understandings of both leisure and pleasure over this period, skewering Marxist theories that it was all a capitalist stitch-up with the proposition that Edwardians of all classes made their own fun and commercial interests followed rather than led.

One of the most interesting threads in the book is the way that Amusement Parks brought to the masses the experiences of modernity in illusory form: travelling underwater, driving a car and flying. The backgrounds may have been painted or projected to achieve the illusion, but the physical jolts for which people were willing to pay their pennies were real. Simpler devices such as the Joy Wheel at Blackpool enticed punters of both sexes to lose their dignity as they struggled against centrifugal force. Riding on ‘The Witching Waves’ at White City or descending a helter-skelter gave women a licensed opportunity for their long skirts to billow seductively. Dodgems came later, allowing women a turn at the wheel that might not otherwise have come their way. At the same time, the proprietors of the more successful and long-lasting Amusement Parks understood that delirium must be controlled and rationed, working in close collaboration with town councils to ensure an overall sense of decorum.

This book is published in the series ‘Studies in Architecture’, and within the necessary and gripping story of changing experiences bought and sold in Amusement Parks over the period, there is a thread about the design of buildings and the layout of

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sites. Many of the buildings were no more than billboard fronts to the rides, attracting attention and providing ‘loading bays’ for waiting customers. In Edwardian times, these might simulate landscape features, such as the ‘River Caves of the World’ that reached Blackpool in 1905 having been pioneered at Coney Island and then at Earl’s Court. This, and a similar outburst of rocaille around the ‘Fun Grotto’ at the Southend Kursaal, relate to the artificiality of eighteenth-century and later landscape features. The groves and flowers flanking the railway embankment at Dreamland, a postcard of which inspired Kane’s doctoral study and the book, signal an older heritage from Vauxhall via Tivoli and Rosherville that justifies the use of the word ‘park’, but these given less detailed consideration.

Larger buildings, combining facilities for eating, drinking and dancing, provided landmarks at the entrances to the parks. The style of these aligned with the eclectic buildings of outdoor exhibition sites, until in 1933 the Thompson family of Blackpool Pleasure Beach took the surprising step of employing Joseph Emberton, a native English Modernist with experience at Wembley and Olympia. On the face of it, Modernism was not a style ideally suited to revelry, but it showed how this premier amusement park wanted to keep up with fashion. The Pleasure Beach is the last major survivor of the genre, and for many years succeeded in keeping listing officials away, although the Casino is now protected. This informative and entertaining book could not have been better timed for giving context to the miraculous resurrection of Dreamland.

University of Greenwich alan powers

Archaeologies of Conflict (Bloomsbury, London, 2013). By John Carman. 216 × 138 mm. 152 pp. 14 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 8496 6888 0. Price £45.00.

One of the highest-profile developments in land-scape archaeology over the past two decades has been the growth of Conflict Archaeology. This sub-discipline began life as Battlefield Archaeology, explicitly studying the sites of organised armed conflict, but has since expanded its scope to consider the wider, material effects and implications of

conflict. In this latest contribution to the Bloomsbury Debates in Archaeology series, John Carman presents an overview of this branch of archaeology and the debates within it, showing how the study of conflict archaeology has evolved, describing the landscape, site-specific and anthropological studies that have influenced archaeological studies of conflict. He describes the strand of archaeology that developed from extensive landscape study of terrain and the recovery and study of artefacts from battlefields, including the survey of the Little Big Horn Battlefield, scene of Custer’s Last Stand. Carmen discusses the processual nature of much of this work which follows the tradition of military history, with linear narratives, functionalist interpretation and a concomitant down-playing or ignoring of non-functional aspects of the battlefield, including the sociology of the military and cultural and ritual factors that might influence behaviours. He also points out that much of this particular strand of work has been a nationalistic enterprise.

Nevertheless, examples of international co-operation are cited, which should prompt more examination than this slim volume allows. However, battlefields are not the only focus of study and this has given rise to a series of studies that have included wider examinations of organised violence and its effects and associated activities, including archaeologies of internment, occupation and of the Holocaust. These areas of study tend to be more wide-ranging in approach and concerned with more than the material consideration of the site of conflict itself. Carmen acknowledges that this has led to fragmentation within the field but contends that there is strength in this diversity. He also explores the diversity of approach and focus apparent in the study of modern conflict, which has been largely driven by archaeologists trained in prehistory, who have introduced different theoretical concerns from the battlefield specialists, some of whom come from landscape archaeology. Carman contends that those engaged in the modern field may feel more at liberty to discuss ritual, environment and other external factors than some of those working in the historic period up to 1914. Nevertheless, the useful but neglected work done by Bristol University’s geographers on militarised landscapes is not considered although it is primarily archaeological in focus and also brings


new discourse to bear. Carman writes as a critical friend to both parties. His argument is that conflict archaeology is a young subject and that unnecessary fragmentation can only serve to weaken attempts to develop research, whether internationally or across the internal divisions.

This book does offer a concise introduction to the discipline as it currently stands. However, there are some omissions that are the result of this being a slim volume, as books in this series tends to be. It is unfortunate that there was not more space for discussion of the ethics of conflict archaeology. Such concerns are most marked in the modern era, where contentious issues, including the recovery of civilian victims of the Spanish Civil War, draw on narratives from conflict archaeology but feed contemporary political discourse. Another absence is discussion of the exhumation of the 1916 mass-grave at Fromelles, which was set against the backdrop of relations between Australia and its former colonial ruler, Great Britain. In addition, there is no discussion of the role of media in forming narratives of battlefield and conflict archaeology and, in particular, creating the popular image of this area of study: television shows including ‘Battlefield Detectives’, ‘Two Men in a Trench’, ‘Finding the Fallen’, and several episodes of ‘Time Team’ have all had conflict themes, often dealing with human remains, as well as other evidence, and drawing as much from forensics (and narrative arcs from Crime Scene Investigation) as from traditional archaeology.

Carman’s final assertion is that ‘we have much to learn from each other’ (p. 101) and this is the critical message from the book. Despite theoretical disagreements and apparently opposing positions between Battlefield and Conflict archaeologists and the techniques they employ, the practitioners of the archaeology of conflict are employing the standard tools of archaeological research to consider the people in the eye of the storm and their material traces.

WYG, Bristol martin brown

Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe (Brepols, Turnhout, 2013). Edited by Sunhild Kleingärtner, Timothy, P. Newfield, S. Rossignol and D. Wehner. 150 × 230 mm. xiv = 406 pp. ISBN 978 0 8884 4823 1. Price €80.00

Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe is a collection of fifteen papers covering a range of topics and disciplines focusing on the relationship between colonisation, social change and landscape transformation in Central-Eastern Europe; the fruits of an international conference held in Toronto in 2010, within the Gentes trans Albiam series. It is not possible to provide a review of each paper within the limited constraints of this response, but the editors are to be congratulated on a solid and accessible piece of scholarship. At a time when the value of conference proceedings is being challenged by academic performance evaluations, this volume clearly demonstrates the continuing relevance and importance of collections with strong topical integrity. At first glance the collection may appear eclectic, but there is a consistent thread running throughout which is highlighted in the introduction and concluding remarks.

The volume is principally concerned with the impact of settlement on the landscape; a complex interplay between natural topography and human artifice, between the physical and imagined environment. The regional coverage is ambitious, with four geographic subdivisions stretching east as far as Novgorod and south as far as Hungary, although as the editors state the coverage is not comprehensive. The main cultural process shaping these societies was Christianisation and specifically Latinisation, a rapid integration into the world west of the Elbe resulting from a complex dialectic between the indigenous populations and incoming colonists, crusaders and merchants. The lens for scrutinising these transformations is the landscape, and the editors highlight how interdisciplinary synthesis of a broad range of data is the only means of achieving a holistic understanding of the relationships between historical landscapes and cultural change. The concept of landscape is explored in some depth in the introduction, mirroring the range of approaches in the contributions.

The selection of essays presents the reader with a useful suite of approaches to the medieval

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landscape. Each of the papers forms a self-contained case study, from a different geographic region, and focuses on a specific type of data or is contained by a single disciplinary paradigm. In some cases multiple sources are drawn upon. There are also stylistic differences between the contributions, reflecting the range of disciplines and approaches. By the end we are not left with a holistic understanding of the relationship between landscape, settlement and social change east of the Elbe, but rather a series of important vignettes (as Rossignol describes them in the concluding remarks). Taken together they illustrate the variability of sources relating to an understanding of past environments; indeed, it is not possible to encompass these within a single study without the involvement of multiple specialists working towards the same research objectives. The value of each discipline is reflected upon in turn, from the high-resolution physical minutiae of archaeological research and the longue durée perspective on vegetation change offered by palynology, through to the experiential windows on past landscapes preserved in written sources. The link between medieval landscapes and disease is an important component, and increasingly popular in interdisciplinary studies as demonstrated recently by Ole Bendictow’s compelling What Disease Was Plague? (Brill 2010).

In this respect the volume is multi- rather than interdisciplinary. However, this striving for a connected, integrated understanding should not be overemphasised. Such an effort would be futile if it was simply descriptive — a gazetteer of all that is known of the physical and conceptual landscapes of medieval Central-Eastern Europe. Instead, the collection presents a series of focused research questions tackling the same issues from diverse perspectives. It draws attention to pronounced similarities and differences in the outcomes of Latinisation on the shape of landscapes in neighbouring regions. What is particularly striking is how environmental history and environmental archaeology have been accommodated within the same collection, as the two are typically segregated in their outputs.

The accessibility of this volume is one of its strongest aspects. A scan of the footnotes of the fifteen papers reaffirms the extensive corpus of scholarship in German, Polish, Latvian and

Russian on the topic of medieval landscapes and environments. Traditionally fragmented, they are brought together and made accessible to an international audience in this volume. The medieval Baltic Sea region is becoming increasingly popular within international and inter-regional studies, thanks in no small part to the monumental Culture Clash and Compromise project led by Nils Blomkvist (1996–2005), and this volume represents another important step moving us away from the Western-centricity and methodological fragmentation of past scholarship, towards a more holistic understanding of the development of European societies.

University of Reading aleks pluskowski

Why National Parks? (Wildtrack Publishing, 2013). By Ian O. Brodie. 150 × 230 mm. 144 pp. 20 b/w illustrations. ISBN 978 1 9040 9852 2. Price £14.50.

This book, from specialist landscape publishers Wildtrack, explores the values and attitudes which characterised the drive towards the creation of designated landscapes (National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) in England and Wales, and which the author fears are in danger from indifference, or possibly inappropriate exploitation, in the current climate. Ian Brodie, more widely known for his interpretative ramblers’ guidebooks, draws heavily on experience in his native landscape, the Lake District, to illustrate his argument, noting that this area has featured prominently in shaping the values he promotes.

This is not a history book, and the author is more concerned with setting out the underlying philosophy of those whose efforts culminated in the National Parks legislation in 1949, rather than tracing the process itself — though he does include a timeline of the most significant dates in what has clearly been a long drawn-out story. The book is rather a call to arms for those concerned to perpetuate and enjoy some of our best-loved and most highly valued landscapes against the perceived threat of an increasingly indifferent public, inadequate resources, and largely ineffective political management.


Brodie deploys the discussion around the Thirlmere (Cumbria) controversy of the 1870s (he has written separately on this subject), and subsequent writing, to illustrate the values that guided enthusiasts for designation. He is concerned that these values are in danger of being eroded and bemoans the loss, as he sees it, of wider public support for these principles, and the risk this poses for the future of significant landscapes. It is curious, though, that he does not take encouragement from the recent designation of the South Downs, nor from the relatively recent creation of National Parks in Scotland, which are only mentioned in passing; these would seem, on the face of it, to suggest that the idea of designation still has traction, and it would have been interesting to have the author’s take on these developments.

Brodie is also careful to assert that designated landscapes should not be, and never have been, spaces to be ‘preserved in aspic’. In rejecting this position, he recognises the validity of appropriate evolution, and of balancing and, as far as possible, reconciling the different demands on these spaces. But his primary agenda is that of the rambler with an appreciation of the beauty of wild places, and is encapsulated in the statement that ‘our social, creative and economic health depends a priori on the quality of, and access to the landscape in which we live’. Natural beauty, its conservation, and access to it, take strong precedence over other interests, and these form the foundation of much of the book’s argument.

Thirlmere is one example of the contested nature of these spaces; the diversity of opinion between Romanticist views of landscape, conservationists,

and those seeking quiet recreation is explored at length. But other arguments — those for more gregarious forms of recreation, economic development of designated landscapes, and the interests and aspirations of those who inhabit, or make their living from, these landscapes — are dealt with more summarily, and are thus dismissed less convincingly.

The author quotes extensively, mainly from the work of pioneers of designated landscapes and contemporary commentators; and he invokes several heavyweights, including Wordsworth, Trevelyan, Rousseau, Joad and Shoard, alongside more eclectic sources such as Camus, Sartre and de Saint-Exupery. These quotations are sometimes lengthy, and a more rigorous edit might have noticed that some are repeated — in one instance, two pages after it first appears. This reflects the essential difficulty with this book: its premise is supportable, but an absence of clear structure allows the author to introduce and reintroduce concepts throughout the text which make the argument feel somewhat repetitive.

The book is illustrated with twenty photographs, mostly of designated landscapes, but these are monochrome and are too small to do justice to the grandeur of their subject matter; the cover photo shows what might have been possible with a bigger production budget. There is a comprehensive bibliography, but references are to publications rather than to specific pages. Better editing would have removed duplication, corrected some mistakes in the spelling of personal names, and justified the text to make it easier to read.

University of Sheffield phil back

Book review: The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor (Bloomsbury,

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