British Archaeology, no 7, September 1995: Book reviews

MEDIEVAL SHIPS AND SHIPPING
Gillian Hutchinson
Leicester, UKP39.50
ISBN 0-7185-1413-0 hb

Ships that know no frontiers on the oceans also, metaphorically, traverse the frontiers of Man's achievement by virtue of the multifarious skills he has lavished upon them; they are his noblest artefact.' This statement, which appeared in a UNESCO document in 1972, neatly encapsulates the importance of ships, and in this book, Gillian Hutchinson, Curator of Archaeology at the National Maritime Museum, has skilfully summarised what little is known about medieval shipbuilding, the manner in which ships were operated, their lading, handling, repair and overall management.

Ships have been around for so long that we take them for granted, and forget that they are man's largest and (perhaps) most versatile form of transport. Hutchinson writes from first-hand knowledge, having experience of numerous boat and ship excavations both on land and underwater, and she assembles her material from across northern Europe.

Times have changed much since the medieval period. Today, the Norwegian tanker Jahre Viking is the largest ship afloat, being an incredible 564,739 tonnes and 458m long. The Bremen cog of c 1380, on the other hand, a typical large deep-water vessel of the period, was just 24m in overall length. Ship development, for instance the change from a simple steering-oar to a stern-hung rudder, was an achievement not over decades but centuries, as were a second and third mast and fore and aft sails. Shipwrecks in particular are revealing more and more knowledge of construction and cargoes, and the author reminds us that evidence of packaging is often as important as the commodity itself for determining a ship's use.

Many books have been written about early shipping, but this book will become the reference work for the period.

Richard Larn is Curator of the Shipwreck & Heritage Centre in Charlestown, Cornwall

MEDIEVAL TOWNS
John Schofield and Alan Vince
Leicester, UKP14.99
ISBN 0-7185-1413-0 pb

Nowadays the vast majority of us live in towns and cities, but a `sense of place' often eludes today's town dwellers. And yet in towns and cities the physical threads that bind us with the past can be most obvious: in churches and cathedrals, market places and old streets, castles and town walls. Urban archaeology has the capacity to draw these threads together, and make more sense of where we live today.

Medieval Towns is an example of the kind of tapestry that can be woven as a result. Building on 30 years of intensive work in towns, it is a highly readable, authoritative summary. In essence, the book is a survey of the present state of knowledge about British towns in the period 1100-1500; but one also finds in it many of the preoccupations of urban archaeologists today - the impact of a town's physical topography on its origins, form and development; spatial analysis of its planned and evolving elements; the identification of economic and social groups; the construction of chronologies and typologies; the relationship between a town and its hinterland; the environment in towns, and environmental factors affecting towns; and the nature of trade and commerce.

There is an immense disparity between the desire of today's town dwellers to know more about their town's history and the average urban excavation report. Moreover, interpretation boards at excavations tend to offer the visitor only a snapshot of a fragment of the town, rarely the broader picture. This book goes a long way towards satisfying the public desire for broad, general information.

Medieval archaeology has sometimes been said to provide a footnote to history; but in this book, history is the footnote. This pre-eminently archaeological book conveys an impression of the society and lives of ordinary medieval people, about whom history rarely has much to say.

Olwyn Owen is an Inspector of Ancient Monuments at Historic Scotland

THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE WORLD
John and Elizabeth Romer
Michael O'Mara, UKP19.99
ISBN 1-85479-933-9 hb

When reading a book by John Romer, one can occasionally sympathise with his attempt to communicate antiquity to a large lay audience, even where his over-familiar style is discordant. Sometimes, however, he loses his more serious readership in favour of trying to whip up mass hysteria, portraying himself as a lone quasi-martyr against a conspiracy of archaeologists (as in The Rape of Tutankhamun). In this book, written with his wife, he seems to be aiming to enthuse readers without pontificating too much. But bombast is still the Romer style and this volume reads as if the authors had the scripting of a TV presentation paramount in their minds - the TV series was in fact shown on Channel 4 earlier this summer.

Successful passages in the book include an evocative description of the workshop of Pheidias at Olympia - its angles and dimensions mirroring that of the temple itself, probably to experiment with architectural problems. There is also a good discussion of the misconception of the Colossus of Rhodes bestriding the harbour, and indications based on archaeological evidence of its probable location on the site of the present fort of St Nicholas.

There are many passages, however, where the Romers irritatingly and tediously get in the way of their subject by thrusting forward inept parallels and colloquialisms. For instance, the royal iconagraphy of Alexander's sculptor Lysippus produced `the first image of a modern pin-up'. The sensation of walking through the Grand Gallery and corridors of the Great Pyramid is likened to an Amazonian tribe `on their first walk through the turbine tubes of a silent power station.' This sort of ludicrous image and the book's prolixity make it an exhausting, not an exhilarating, trip around some of the most striking creations of the human race.

George Hart works for the Education Service at the British Museum

LONDON SURVEY'D
Hermione Hobhouse
RCHME, UKP7.95
ISBN 1-873592-19-1 pb

This small book went with an exhibition at the Museum of London in 1994 which marked the centenary of the Survey of London. What has it been doing for 100 years? Producing authoritative volumes on the buildings of London, usually grouped by parish, and with certain buildings given monographs. In 1994, the tally was 44 area volumes and 17 monographs. These volumes are used by historians, architects, house-owners, developers and builders.

The Survey began as the personal initiative of the architect CR Ashbee and a circle of enthusiasts; it was later jointly run by the London County Council (LCC). When the GLC was abolished in 1986, the Survey found a home in the English Royal Commission.

This memoir by Hermione Hobhouse, the Survey's General Editor, shows how the development of the Survey reflects improvements in attitudes in English society towards the value of buildings during the 20th century. The founders were gifted, sometimes eccentric, and determined. Laurence Gomme, Clerk to the fledgling LCC, was the author of the street-names Kingsway and Aldwych, around which the Saxon Lundenwic has now been found. Sir John Lubbock, Chairman of the LCC, was not only the author of the Ancient Monuments Act of 1882, but also the inventor of bank holidays (bless him twice). Philip Norman was one of the earliest rescue archaeologists in London; and Walter Godfrey went on to found the National Buildings Record, the basis of the National Monuments Record. These enthusiasts were optimistic, perhaps naive, in thinking that developers and owners would not demolish buildings once they knew them to be of historic importance.

The joining of forces with the LCC brought better standards of recording; and the range of buildings became wider, no longer gentlemen's seats and terrace houses that would make good clubs, but housing of the lower classes and public buildings. The long shelves of blue volumes are a monument to patient recording for its own sake. In today's overly cost-conscious world, the Survey of London represents a noble tradition of how to do things thoroughly and well.

Dr John Schofield is Academic Editor of the Museum of London Archaeology Service