Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Apr 11, Stephen rated it liked it Shelves: archeology. A heavy, thick, dry text book, not an exciting fireside read. A reference book for looking up facts. But it is really full of facts!
Hand drawings and sketches tho, no photos. Graeme Talboys rated it it was amazing May 03, Lauren rated it liked it Jul 23, Sylvia rated it it was amazing Apr 07, Krystina rated it it was amazing May 23, Rebecca rated it it was amazing Jan 26, Roderich rated it really liked it Mar 14, Dylan Herbert rated it it was amazing Mar 05, Chloe Cronogue rated it really liked it Feb 02, Lawrence rated it it was amazing Jan 01, Nick Fionnlagh rated it really liked it Feb 25, Tom rated it really liked it Oct 06, Luke Bateson rated it liked it May 23, Nicci rated it it was amazing Jan 07, Matt Richards rated it it was amazing Jul 31, I Baron rated it it was ok Nov 18, Cecilia Jane rated it it was amazing Feb 02, Alessandra rated it liked it Sep 16, Graeme K.
Emily added it Jul 09, Michaela marked it as to-read Nov 23, Jennie marked it as to-read Nov 26, Ruth Nolan is currently reading it Jan 10, Mac marked it as to-read Feb 14, Mariana marked it as to-read Mar 07, Cheryl Mcdonald- wensing marked it as to-read Jun 04, Kara marked it as to-read Feb 10, Mohamed Hozayen marked it as to-read Mar 06, Melanie added it Mar 06, James added it Apr 27, Jbondandrews marked it as to-read Jun 20, Elias Kevin marked it as to-read May 17, Olivia Church marked it as to-read Dec 03, Luke Scarisbrick marked it as to-read Dec 02, Oscar Jimenez marked it as to-read Mar 10, Brooke marked it as to-read May 02, Chris marked it as to-read May 16, Many years ago, too many to recall, we were working as field archaeologists in Milton Keynes, a new city that was then under construction and which needed archaeologists to ensure that everything was recorded before it was destroyed by the construction work.
We were not long out of university and were frustrated by the lack of a decent reference book that would explain terms and techniques which we encountered every day in our work. There was not much to do in the evenings the area was one huge building site , and we could not afford a TV, and so we naively plotted the idea of The Handbook of British Archaeology. Actually, our idea for a title was A Thesaurus of British Archaeology , as we wanted to give the impression that this was a treasury of terms and words, but with hindsight it was not the best title.
We decided to write a book that would explain the numerous technical terms in archaeology — the jargon that can make people think they are excluded from the subject. Neolithic flint leaf-shaped arrowhead. Illustration of prehistoric flintworking. A lot of good archaeological books were then produced by different publishing houses, and so we looked at all the books we owned to see who might be interested in our idea.
We initially wrote to Penguin, because we thought that our book would go well with their very general Dictionary of Archaeology. They disagreed and rejected us. We went to Newton Abbot to meet them on a bitterly cold November day in , and were signed up.
It was so much easier to get a publisher in those days, as you could contact them direct without having to go through a literary agent, and most commissioning editors were allowed to make their own decisions without having to convince their own marketing and sales departments. Over thirty years later, we are still approached by publishers who offer us less than this figure to write full-length books! It took us three years to research and write the book using all our spare time.
Fortunately, we moved from Milton Keynes to London and so had access to some of the major archaeological libraries, and we literally looked at every single book and journal that was available on British archaeology and archaeological techniques.
We decided to exclude Ireland, because the archaeology there is so different, and it really needed a separate book. What may be horrifying to many of you was that this was a time before home computers, a time before the internet, the world wide web, mobile phones and all the other paraphernalia of modern life.
Notes in libraries were therefore done by hand, and at home everything was typed up on a manual typewriter. The keys on a manual typewriter offer much heavier resistance than those of a computer keyboard, and so the process was physically exhausting.
All the drawings were done with Rotring pens and ink on drafting film, and the index was compiled manually using hundreds of index cards. Inside the Neolithic long barrow at West Kennet. Prehistoric cup and ring marks on Long Meg standing stone, Cumbria. Bronze Age perforated stone macehead. We really had no idea how widely the book was being used, but gradually people told us that it was a key text for students.
I still use it today, especially in teaching undergraduate, postgraduate and extra-mural students … the handbook is still essential reading. Instead, they appointed Victoria Leitch at the University of Oxford to undertake the work, and she assembled a team of experts who are cited below in the list of chapters. Under her direction, the text has been completely revised and expanded, and all the illustrations have been redrawn and new ones added.
The illustrators were David Hopkins, Sarah M. Lucas and Lucy Martin. We originally had chapters on the main archaeological periods in Britain, from the Palaeolithic to the Medieval period, but a new chapter has been written on post-medieval archaeology.
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