British Archaeology, no 6, July 1995: Book reviews

PREHISTORIC ORKNEY
Anna Ritchie
Batsford, UKP14.99
ISBN 0-7134-7593-5 pb

Two of the oldest houses in north-west Europe, last used in about c3100BC after a 500-year period of habitation, need only have their roofs put back on the wall-tops to be habitable again. These houses are at Knap of Howar - one of the less accessible Orkney islands today - and it was Anna Ritchie, author of this book, who re-excavated them and proved their early date.

A chapter-title `Everyday Life' in any popular book on British prehistory is likely to focus mostly on another settlement on Orkney - the extraordinarily well-preserved later Neolithic houses at Skara Brae - and, again, Anna Ritchie is more than usually justified in writing about the subject, because her own excavation at Skara Brae recovered domestic minutiae that have added an extra dimension to our understanding. She found, for instance, that the inhabitants dined on great auk.

Between Howar and Skara Brae lie substantial differences in house and pottery-types, and behind the author's fascinating detail, presented in her easy-to-read style, it is good to find up-to-date hard scholarship attempting to explain these differences. It is the more impressive for her awareness of very recent excavations which have not yet reached publication. Neolithic houses and chambered tombs, and the great stone circles which mark the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition, account for so high a proportion of Orkney's upstanding monuments that it is unsurprising to find this period taking up half the length of the book.

The section on the Bronze Age - the most difficult period on Orkney - is less satisfactory. Its title, `A Prehistoric Recession?', is unfortunate, as the discovery of Bronze Age homesteads on very small islands (where, exceptionally, they have survived) seems to me to hint at a high level of population, with anxiety to use every scrap of land. Her treatment of the Iron Age, on the other hand, a warlord society dominated by great broch-fortresses, is exciting and perceptive.

Raymond Lamb is Orkney's archaeologist

THE DIFFUSION OF CLASSICAL ART IN ANTIQUITY
John Boardman
Thames and Hudson, UKP34.00
ISBN 0-500-236968 hb

This book is about the impact of Greek art on the non-Greek cultures of antiquity. It aims to discover what happened when, through trade, an artist's own initiative or colonisation, Greeks came into contact with people they regarded as foreigners. Much of the story falls into the early Iron Age, the orientalising and archaic phases of Greek art when, after centuries of isolation, the Greeks began to enrich their own culture by looking outwards, trading and planting colonies abroad.

Sir John Boardman is the author of the standard treatment of this subject in The Greeks Overseas, which is the masterpiece of his prolific scholarly output. Here, however, he is not concerned with the effect of foreign influences on Greek art, but with the reverse phenomenon - artistic borrowing by foreigners from Greeks.

Boardman's well-organised and fully-documented narrative takes the reader on a journey around the fringes of the Greek world from Spain to the Far East. In some instances, notably Egypt, Greek art made hardly any impact on the native tradition before Christian times, while in others, for example Etruria and Rome, the transforming effect of contact was almost overwhelming. Boardman speculates briefly on the factors that governed such variation, but ultimately he is not so interested in questions relating to why, as to those of how and what. He largely dismisses the former question by arguing that the borrowing process was mechanistic, constituting a `reception of Greek art without understanding'. It is, he says, about media rather than messages.

Boardman's narrative lacks the compelling focus of The Greeks Overseas. There the central idea is one of human endeavour, reflecting political, social, economic and artistic expansionism. This book is not about people, but objects; it is less concerned with ideas than with facts. Boardman's writing, however, is plain and straightforward, and his theme is well-illustrated in this well-produced book.

Dr Ian Jenkins is an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum

ANCIENT INVENTIONS
Peter James and Nick Thorpe
Michael O'Mara, UKP25.00
ISBN 1-85479-777-8 hb

This is an amazing and wonderful book. The authors say they began it because, as an ancient historian and an archaeologist, they were plagued for years by questions from friends and acquaintances about scientific, technological and practical know-how in the remote past (most of us have at some time or other been faced with the same questions). So they set about reading widely to put together some answers.

In the end they have compiled much more than the answers to a lot of questions. Certainly the book covers `ancient inventions', but there is a mass of material also about early technology, industrial processes and engineering skills.

The publishers and the book clubs have much to seize on here to sensationalize the contents and no doubt sell more copies, but I shall refrain from doing so. Instead, let me indicate the wealth of material from the chapter headings and contents: medicine, including eye operations, plastic surgery and brain surgery; transportation, including map-making, odometers and the compass; high tech, including computers, clocks and coin-operated slot-machines; sex-life (bound to be a popular chapter, this), including aphrodisiacs, dildos and sex manuals; personal effects, including make-up, tattooing; and so on. The list seems endless.

There are important lessons to be learned in this book, the main one being that we should never underestimate the skills and abilities of people in the past. Much of what we think was developed in later times actually existed earlier on, or the ideas were being developed. Our respect for earlier peoples should be higher.

Mick Aston is Reader in Archaeology at the University of Bristol

TRIPOLITANIA
David Mattingly
Batsford, UKP55.00
ISBN 0-7134-5742-2 hb

The manifest achievement of the colonial period in North Africa, whether French, Italian or British, was the clearance and, in many places, restoration of a great archaeological heritage of standing structures. Subsequently, archaeology has been compartmentalised by publication in three different languages - French, Italian and English - and the synoptic view has been rare.

Now, thanks to David Mattingly, we have this volume spanning the area of the Roman province of Tripolitania. It sets the study of the province on a par with more familiar provinces for the northern part of the empire, and will remain the standard work for the forseeable future.

In particular, it has the advantage of several new approaches that have only appeared previously in the form of articles. First of these is Mattingly's own work in deciphering the web of Libyo/Punic tribes within the area and applying this information to the historical narrative. Second, his own work either side of the Tunisian/Libyan frontier, and much synthesis of French exploration of the area south of Gabes, have enabled him to present a fresh overview of the involvement of the military in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and the development of frontier control, as a growing number of clausurae, or wadi-blocking ditches associated with watch-towers, have been located.

From this background, Mattingly turns to the more familiar archaeology and architecture of the great coastal towns of Tripoli, Sabathra and Leptis Magna. He takes full advantage of the stratigraphic evidence now available from the post-war excavations at Sabathra and fresh survey evidence from Leptis Magna, where aerial photography has added to knowledge both of the early Libyo/Punic entrepot and the vast scale of the western suburbs with their warehouses and caravanserai.

The wealth of the coastal cities is known, as Mattingly has shown in a number of important papers, to have rested primarily on olive oil production controlled by the great families such as that of Septimius Severus, the first African emperor and a native of Leptis. The tentacles of the olive oil industry stretched far across the Gebel into the pre-desert recently explored by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey project, and Mattingly uses this new database to show the range of agricultural produce derived from farming the desert fringe, and also identifies the cultural continuum in the tribal population.

Barri Jones is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester