| ISSN 1357-4442 | Editor: Simon Denison |
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| BOOKS |
New faces and a
helping of guesswork
by Martin Evison
MAKING FACES
John Prag and Richard Neave
British Museum, £18.99
ISBN 0-7141-1743-9 hb
Facial reconstruction was pioneered by Richard Neave, an ‘artist in medicine and life sciences’ at Manchester University, as a tool in forensic science and archaeology in Britain. Co-written with John Prag, Keeper of Archaeology at Manchester Museum, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to its methods and application in archaeology.
Average depths of facial tissues are well known at a number of sites on the skull and these are used as the basis of reconstruction. A cursory glance at a skull reveals that large areas of the face have no underlying bone structure which can be used to predict facial shape – the eyes, the mouth, the shape of the nose, for example – and much of the finished reconstruction is therefore guesswork. Despite this, facial reconstruction has proved effective in identifying skeletal remains in a number of important forensic cases, and some of Neave’s remarkable successes are reviewed early in the book. The ability of a facial reconstruction to capture the attention and imagination of the public is of paramount importance, and it is this aspect which makes facial reconstruction valuable in archaeology.
Prag and Neave explore the use of facial reconstruction as an analytical technique: is the portrait of a noblewoman on an Etruscan sarcophagus that of the individual encarcerated within? Are the individuals buried in grave circle B at Mycenae relatives? In the latter case, I believe facial reconstruction is stretched beyond its limits. It is not yet possible to establish whether skulls belong to close biological relatives from measurement and statistical analysis, and the degree of subjectitity in a facial reconstruction must introduce further inaccuracy. It is often tempting to find what one is looking for.
Facial reconstructions continue to attract public interest and offer a means of generating empathy with those whose lives we hope to portray. Despite this, the technique is almost entirely ignored by academic archaeology. This well-written and accessi ble introduction is therefore particularly welcome.
Dr Martin Evison is an archaeologist working on facial reconstruction in the Department of Forensic Pathology at Sheffield University
Mathematics and
archaeological change
by Ken Dark
TIME, PROCESS AND STRUCTURED TRANSFORMATION IN
ARCHAEOLOGY
Sander van der Leeuw and James McGlade (eds)
Routledge, £80.00
ISBN 0-415-11788-7 hb
Can mathematics offer archaeologists a deeper understanding of change in human societies? This book explores the possibility that non-linear dynamics can provide new answers to archaeological questions.
Non-linear dynamics is a broad term covering a range of mathematical properties and approaches. These have become an important part of several disciplines, but – as yet – have made only slight impression on archaeology. Such approaches are most widely known under the somewhat misleading label of ‘chaos theory’, but chaos theory is only one aspect of non-linear dynamics.
Unsurprisingly, given this mathematical background, many of the papers are highly technical in content. In places, formulae and specialised terminology are employed and several papers use few archaeological data. Consequently, some may be misled into assuming that the volume lacks relevance to archaeology. However, that assumption would be a grave mistake.
The use of non-linear dynamics to study archaeological issues is genuinely new and exciting. Questions of time and change are central to the discipline and this approach offers interesting perspectives on these. The specific archaeological cases discussed are diverse in date and location, but include important studies of broad relevance, in cluding the spread of disease, urbanization, and the consequences of sustained political interaction.
This book is important not only for its general approach, but also as a timely prompt to archaeologists to become aware of the new interest in the analysis of change, complexity and long-term process which is sweeping through the sciences and social sciences. While the editors of this book are keen to stress their neutrality in current theoretical debates, the interdisciplinary trend (of which non-linear dynamics is an important part) is likely to have deep-running consequences for archaeological theory. So further studies, exploring the mathematical techniques used here and non-mathematical approaches to complexity and change being developed in other disciplines, can be expected in the future.
Dr Ken Dark is an archaeologist and a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Reading
Photography, vision
and ancient sites
by Simon Denison
CELTIC BRITAIN
Homer Sykes
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99
ISBN 0-297-82210-1 hb
HOLY PLACES OF CELTIC BRITAIN
Mick Sharp
Blandford, £20.00
ISBN 0-7137-2642-3 hb
Now here’s an odd thing. Photographic books about ancient sites and monuments are rare enough, and here are two arriving at once, with almost the same title, covering much the same ground. Many of the same sites appear in both books.
Both, however, are welcome. A fine photograph has unparallelled power to stir, or re-stir, an excitement about the past. At its best, it can capture better than prose that mysterious, awesome, and sometimes forbidding atmosphere which pervades ancient sites, and which draws many people to archaeology in the first place. Sharp and Sykes are both good landscape photographers, more than competent at handling sharpness, resolution, exposure, tonal balance, light, and composition. The best photographs, in each of these collections, are stunning.
Sykes’s book, despite its ‘Celtic’ title, is a general book of photographs of ancient places of almost all periods, ranging from the Neolithic to the medieval. He looks for the overtly picturesque, especially in his lighting, and this will give his best pictures wide, if perhaps not deep or long-lasting appeal. He has a tendency to emotional overkill, however, favouring colour-graduated filters to ‘enhance’ mood in some pictures, as well as grey-grads which darken skies with unsubtle heaviness.
Sykes’s text lets him down badly. Its style is fluent; but it contains a long succession of jaw-dropping howlers (Scots were ‘in Scotland in the Roman period’, which lasted ‘500 years’ from AD43, Herodotus was a ‘Roman scholar’, and on and on). It may seem ungenerous to remark on a photographer’s lack of historical knowledge, but Sykes claims authorship of text as well as illustration, and the sheer rapidity with which astounding mistakes leap off the page at a reader with no more than a decent general knowledge means that this book really deserves an intellectual health warning.
Mick Sharp’s book also cashes in on the outmoded term ‘Celtic Britain’, but at least it has the merit of confining itself to the Iron Age (traditionally the ‘Celtic’ period), and to ‘sacred sites’ (including rivers, groves, shrines, even vanished sites), which are often far from easy photographic subjects. Sharp has worked in archaeology almost all his career, and has unparallelled experience, as well as a natural sensitivity towards these sites. He works at committing his response to film, rather than merely at creating an attractive image. Several pictures made at dusk are gloomy but moving. The fine-detail resolution in Sharp’s best work encourages nose-on-page scrutiny, and repeated viewing. His text is knowledgeable, perceptive and well put together.
Some readers will be disappointed that many of the pictures are neither obviously archaeological, nor especially pretty. Some of the subjects are themselves rather dull (you feel they were included because they had to be). But the best pictures here have a quality of expression that takes them far beyond any coffee-table evocation of ‘beautiful Britain’. This book is a major achievement.
The shame, though, of both books is that they include so little monochrome (none at all in Sykes) – a far more expressive medium than colour if well handled – and so much text, even in Sharp’s case where the text is well worth reading. Most people, including publishers, benightedly view photographs as ‘illustrations’ which somehow need text to give them purpose; whereas in truth, prosaic information jammed onto the same page as a fine print merely breaks the spell.
Simon Denison is Editor of British Archaeology
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