Issue no 44, May 1999

THE WHITE MONKS
Glyn Coppack
Tempus, £18.99
ISBN 07524-1413-5 hb

The Cistercians were a back-tobasics monastic order founded in France in 1098 by Stephen Harding of Dorset, and developed by Bernard of Clairvaux. Their first English foundation was at Waverley in 1128, and by 1160 there were 67 Cistercian monasteries in England.

Today, all that remains of this influential group are the haunting ruins of their abbeys, often set in some of the country's most beautiful rural landscapes - a romantic picture that belies the fact that, in their day, the Cistercians were powerful and influential land-owners, controlling large cattle and sheep ranches. Great builders and innovators, the Cistercians reclaimed vast acres of marginal fen and moorland, as well as developing their industrial base, including iron works, lead workings and coal mines.

Glyn Coppack, the head of English Heritage's East Midlands regional team, has worked in the field of monastic studies for many years, and is an internationallyrecognised authority on monasticism in Britain. He has produced a number of accessible books on the topic, including English Heritage's Abbeys and Priories (1990) and Fountains Abbey (1993). In this new book, Dr Coppack provides an interesting and readable guide to the development of the Cistercians in England, drawing heavily on recent archaeological work.

He charts the spectacular rise and ultimate decline of the Cistercians, beginning with an introduction to the foundation of the order, followed by a discussion of the earliest buildings and the efforts to find permanent bases in England, to the erection of the first permanent monasteries, the growing success of the Cistercians in the 12th and 13th centuries, and their eventual demise at the Reformation.

Dr Sally Crawford is a Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Birmingham

ANIMALS IN CELTIC LIFE AND MYTH
Miranda Green
Routledge, £14.99
ISBN 0-415-18588-2 pb

Animals are a fascinating subject of archaeological research. In this book, Miranda Green discusses the importance of different animals in Iron Age and Roman farming and hunting, and analyses their role in war, sacrifice, ritual, art and religion. She also considers the significance of animals in the Celtic myths of Wales and Ireland.

First published in 1992 but now issued in paperback, this book takes a modern approach in its study of everyday and ritual actions as two indivisible aspects of human life. `It is quite impossible to separate the profane and spirit worlds, or the ritual from the secular aspects of society,' Prof Green writes in her opening chapter. This approach has been pioneered in particular by JD Hill of Southampton University whose work emphasises the symbolic and ritual component of much of the material found in Iron Age deposits on so-called domestic sites.

Some scholars stress that much of our traditional impression of Celtic life in the Iron Age period has been gained from biased literary sources, and that Iron Age material should be interpreted in its own right, rather than in relation to the classical texts or Celtic myths. From the outset, Prof Green, Director of the SCARAB research centre at the University of Wales College, Newport, is careful to draw attention to such potential bias.

Although the major topics occupy separate chapters, there is a subtle system of cross-referencing and controlled repetition which binds the book together. There are numerous illustrations of artefacts and animal skeletons from Britain and Europe, supplemented by evocative descriptions of others, and the book demonstrates the author's encyclopaedic knowledge of her subject.

Dr Ann Woodward is a Research Fellow at the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit

READER IN GENDER ARCHAEOLOGY
Kelley Hays-Gilpin and David Whitley (eds)
Routledge, £18.99
ISBN 0-415-17360-4 pb

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a Reader as `a book of extracts for learning', and certainly the way the editors have categorised the contributions enables the reader to progress through many diverse fields of thought that have developed in gender studies over the years. Papers in each category are introduced with an invaluable short section by the editors.

All the articles in this book were originally published elsewhere, some as early as the mid 1980s. However, they are not arranged chronologically which sometimes causes problems. Throughout the book, later papers have a confidence which shows how gender studies in archaeology have matured.

Many articles were illuminating. `Brain evolution in females' by Dean Falk is not the most inspiring title but it disguises an article written in a very accessible and amusing way, with an important message. He dismisses the view held by some in anthropology that women have smaller brains than men.

The novice to gender studies may come away from this book with the impression that there is little happening in Britain - most articles here are written by researchers from elsewhere in the world - which is unfortunate. There is much innovative research taking place, moving away from male-versus-female debate and placing, for example, children in the archaeological record. Researchers are also now beginning to try and understand masculinity in the past, and get away from the idea of the `30-something male achiever' who seems to figure so prominently in the archaeological record.

The editors prepared a careful and informative introduction, but no review or summary at the end and in fact the final section is the weakest in the book. A comprehensive overview with an outline of ways forward would have been constructive.

Jenny Moore is part-time editor for the Institute of Field Archaeologists

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ROCK ART
Christopher Chippindale and PaulTaçon (eds)
CUP, £17.95
ISBN 0-521-57619-9 pb

In this book, the editors advocate a truly archaeological study of rock art. They stress three methods - informed methods (insights obtained directly from artists who created the rock art), formal methods (structured approaches for studying the art where informed approaches are not possible), and analogy, that old tool of rock art research.

The editors stress that the art is our great and shared legacy, and the 18 papers which follow their introduction reflect the spatial, temporal and pictorial diversity of the phenomenon, ranging from the earliest known art at Chauvet Cave in France, through the later prehistory of Europe, to ethnographic art of the common era in Africa, Australia, America, Canada, the Pacific and Central Asia, and to art of our own period.

Most papers adopt either informed or formal approaches; but Clottes shows that analogy is still valid in his paper on the spectacular three Cs - Chauvet and Cosquer caves in France and the open air art at Coa, Portugal. This is the major Palaeolithic contribution to the volume.

The idea that landscape and context inform the meaning of the art is illustrated with examples from as far afield as western USA, San rock art, and Australia and the Pacific. We also learn that decorated caves and rock-shelters may have been points of contact with a spirit realm. The subject matter particular to the San - notably imaginary rain creatures and the Mythic Woman - caution against overtly straightforward interpretations.

Later prehistoric Europe rock art is well-served by Bradley's analysis of Iberian and British Bronze Age weapon carvings which, in some areas, appear to relate to other deposition phenomena such as hoards.

An especially novel interpretation came in Clegg's study of the engravings in Sydney Harbour made by a 19th/20th century seafarer close to the hospital for the insane in which he was receiving treatment. It is an excellent example of the problems one encounters using apparently informed approaches. It warns against presumption in interpretation while reminding us that a logical reading of the iconography can reveal much about the artist.

Dr Paul Pettitt works at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology at the University of Oxford