Issue no 38, October 1998

SCIENCE AND STONEHENGE
eds B Cunliffe and C Renfrew
OUP/British Academy, £29.50
ISBN 0-19-726174-4 hb

English Heritage's definitive publication in 1995 of the Stonehenge excavations prompted a conference at the Royal Society of which this book is the product (and at which, incidentally, a chance meeting between a producer and an archaeologist led to the BBC television series Meet the Ancestors).

After two introductory pieces by the editors, archaeologists, geologists, scientists, an archaeoastronomer and an engineer contribute to 14 chapters that at once cover the whole realm of modern Stonehenge archaeology and thought, and demonstrate the sheer excitement of current research and what is yet to come. Not so long ago, there was a sense that little more was to be said about Stonehenge. The story, incomplete as it was, was done. This excellently edited and produced volume shows how completely wrong was that impression.

We can find out here when the ditch around the stones was dug (5,013-4,933 years ago, with 95 per cent confidence), and that some bones were placed on the bottom that were already between 70 and 420 years old. We can read about the most dramatic attempt yet to replicate the erection of a Stonehenge megalith (the huge sarsen structure could have been built within three years). We can get up to date on the old idea that the Welsh bluestones reached the site during the Ice Age - they didn't (`Glaciers . . . never reached Salisbury plain'). We can learn that, despite all the verbiage claiming so much more, the summer solstice sunrise alignment is still the only astronomical feature at Stonehenge of which we can be really confident.

It is a sad thought that none of the pioneer modern archaeologists who worked at Stonehenge in the middle of this century is alive to see what is now being built on the foundations they laid. I like to think that they would be pleasantly surprised to find so much humanity in a work that proclaims itself as science. Amidst all the rigour and statistics, the copious diagrams and wonderfully useful bibliographies, we are never allowed to forget that Stonehenge was made by people. No one with an interest in Stonehenge could fail to be inspired by something in this book.

Mike Pitts is a former Curator of the Alexander Keiller Museum at Avebury

by Stephen Rippon

MAKING ENGLISH LANDSCAPES
eds K Barker and T Darvill
Oxbow, £18.00
ISBN 1-900188-50-3 pb

This short book commemorates the 25th anniversary of Christopher Taylor's book Dorset, and is a fitting tribute to the contribution that Taylor and others have made to landscape archaeology in recent decades. As Robert Higham says in his concluding chapter, `landscape study is a field which draws much more than a specialist audience ...[It] appeals to a broad spectrum of people with local, regional and very much wider interests'. This well-written and well-illustrated volume exemplifies just how accessible landscape studies can be.

Chronologically, the eight chapters range from prehistoric ritual monuments, through Anglo-Saxon estates, to 18th century pheasant shooting. They cover a number of case studies from Cornwall and Dorset to Northumbria, along with more general themes such as Tom Williamson's discussion of `fur, fish and feather' in the post medieval landscape. This last paper is an interesting examination of the relationship between man and nature, stressing the importance of what he terms `intermediate' forms of exploitation: `the forms of animal management which were not equivalent to the hunting of truly wild animals, nor yet to the husbandry of fully domesticated ones'.

Christopher Taylor himself charts some of the major changes that have taken place in our understanding of the English landscape since his book on Dorset was published in 1970. The theme is taken up by Timothy Darvill who explores what `the landscape' really is. His view that `the term "landscape" has been hijacked and perverted so often, it has now become seriously devalued in intellectual terms' will no doubt be the subject of many an undergraduate essay.

Dr Stephen Rippon is Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter

by Rob Ixer

THE IRISH STONE AXE PROJECT
Gabriel Cooney and Stephen Mandal
Wordwell, £15.00
ISBN 1-869857-23-2 hb

Progess in science is a wonderful thing but is often a slow and painstaking business to achieve. Not for us the effortless leap from Stone Age to Atomic Age supposedly made by Amazonian Indians in recent decades. In science, rather, it is the correct recording and effective transmission of data that brings intellectual advance. In the field of stone axe studies, despite almost two decades of good work, researchers have struggled to combine these elements adequately.

Now, however, some vital steppingstones to progress have been laid by the Irish Stone Axe Project and this book, its first monograph. It bridges the work of the early petrographers, who recognised and designated the 30 or so axe groups found in the British Isles using neat hand-written cards to record their results, and the website and CD-Rom currently being written by members of the CBA's Implement Petrology Committee.

This monograph is definitive and comprehensive rather than easy reading, and is divided into a number of main themes. A scheme for the detailed recording of axe-head morphology and other features is followed by its application to the 13,500 known Irish stone axes. Over half belong to a single petrographical group - porcellenite - which comes from two small quarry sites in Northern Ireland. This is a wonderful and unexpected result. There is a section on the `archaeological aspects' of Irish axes, complete with distribution maps. Finally, these aspects are integrated into a study of the 32 Irish Group VI axes which in Britain form numerically the largest group.

Although this book is primarily aimed at a very specialised readership, it can be used as a template for the description and analysis of other axe groups in Britain.

Dr Rob Ixer is a specialist in Bronze Age mining and metallurgy at the University of Birmingham

by Siân Jones

EXCAVATING WOMEN
Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Marie Louise Stig Sørensen (eds)
Routledge, £50.00
ISBN 0-415-15760-9 hb

Histories of archaeology are hardly littered with references to pioneering female archaeologists. It would be easy to see this as a straightforward reflection of former times - to assume that few women played an active role because until relatively recently most were confined to the home. But as this book demonstrates, the situation is not that straightforward.

Women may have been constrained by their roles as wives and mothers, but many did negotiate and resist these expectations to play important roles in archaeology. Consequently, their absence from most retrospective histories amounts to a double marginalisation - once in their own lifetimes and later through the pen of the historian.

The primary aim of this volume is to reinstate these marginalised women, producing a wealth of fascinating, detailed histories of female archaeologists in various European countries. Sara Champion, of Southampton University, discusses several women active in British archaeology, some of whom were very influential in their time. For instance, Amelia Edwards (1831-1892), a charismatic scholar, synthesiser and populariser, founded the Egyptian Exploration Society, endowed a chair at University College London and was awarded a Civil List pension for `services to literature and archaeology'. Another is Eugenie Sellers Strong (1860-1943), who became Assistant Director of the British School at Rome. Tessa Wheeler (1883-1936) and Hilda Petrie (1871-1957) were also active archaeologists, but their work has been merged with that of their famous husbands.

The editors' intention is not merely to add women to the picture, but also to examine what constraints they faced and how they negotiated a space for themselves within the discipline. They show that for many, working in archaeology meant specialising in areas deemed appropriate for women, such as artefact studies, museum work and the popularisation of the subject. This important book shows how mainstream histories have been constructed and challenges us to consider alternative perspectives extending beyond the usual concern with great discoveries, prestigious excavations and theoretical advances.

Dr Siân Jones is a Lecturer in Archaeology at Manchester University