Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25516 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 488 pages

Synopsis
An authoritative and radical rethinking of the whole of British history before the coming of the Romans, based on remarkable new archaeological finds. So many extraordinary archaeological discoveries (many of them involving the author) have been made in the last thirty years that our whole understanding of British prehistory needs to be updated. So far only the specialists have twigged on to these developments; now, for the first time, Francis Pryor broadcasts them to a much wider, general audience. Aided by aerial photography, coastal erosion (which has helped expose such coastal sites as Seahenge) and new planning legislation which requires developers to excavate the land they build on, archaeologists have unearthed a far more sophisticated life among the Ancient Britons than has been previously supposed. Far from being the barbarians of Roman propaganda, we Brits had our own religion, laws, crafts, arts, trade, farms, priesthood and royalty, the stories of which Francis Pryor tells with passion, wit and intelligence.

From the Inside Flap
Traditionally, British history has been regarded as starting with the Roman Conquest. Yet this is to ignore half a million years of prehistory that still exert a profound influence on British and Irish life today. In Britain BC, Francis Pryor sets the record straight.
Aided in recent years by aerial photography and costal erosion (which has helped expose such sites as Seahenge), and by advances in scientific techniques such as radiocarbon dating and wood analysis, archaeologists have discovered compelling evidence for a much more sophisticated life among the Ancient Britons than has been previously supposed. Far from being woad-painted barbarians, the earliest inhabitants of the British Isles had developed their own religions, laws, crafts, arts, trade systems, farms and priesthood long before the Romans' brief occupation.
Examining sites from the great ceremonial landscapes of Stonehenge, Avebury and the Bend of the Boyne to small domestic settlements, and objects from precious ritual offerings to the tiny fragments of flint discarded by toolmakers, Francis Pryor, one of our leading archaeologists, has created a remarkable portrait of the life of our ancestors, in all its variety and complexity. His authoritative and radical re-examination of Britain and Ireland before the coming of the Romans makes us look afresh at the whole story of our islands.

About the Author
A few years ago, Francis Pryor went to a funeral of a close friend in Manchester. After the ceremony, he got hopelessly lost and wandered through the streets, trying to locate a familiar landmark. Just as the occasional raindrops threatened to turn into a storm, a cab stopped. Pryor got inside. The driver glanced in his rear-view mirror, and said, ‘You’re that the bloke from the telly, aren’t you?’ When Pryor admitted that he was, the driver grinned and started asking questions. He had noticed an inconsistency between two of the Time Team programmes, and had been waiting for a chance to discover the explanation. For the next thirty minutes, as they drove round Manchester, Pryor and the driver had an involved discussion about the philosophy and practice of archaeology. The driver had no training, no degree, and no formal education, but his archaeological knowledge was astonishing, as was his enthusiasm for the subject.

If Francis Pryor is ever wondering who might read his books, or why he is writing them, he remembers that man, navigating Manchester in his minicab, thinking about archaeology. These are Pryor’s ideal audience – people who might have become archaeologists if they had not been failed by our educational system or distracted by other opportunities; people whose lives have been enriched by knowing about the past. He thinks of men and women who, without any formal training or professional interest, understand and interpret some aspects of their own existence through archaeology.

Not only is Pryor passionate about his subject, but he also feels a duty to share his expertise and experience. Archaeology gives him, he is sure, ‘a unique perspective on the present’, and he constantly uses the present and the past to illuminate one another. Part of his method is a refusal to see anything in isolation. He makes connections. He searches for context. He uses his own emotions and experiences to help interpret the past, and uses the past to understand the present. To gain a better understanding of prehistoric farmers, for instance, he decided to keep sheep. Now, he and his wife own a flock of 120, and devote a significant proportion of their lives to working as farmers. During the lambing season, his archaeological work just has to wait. This means, of course, that he lives an enviably balanced life. Most writers retreat inside their heads and forget their bodies. When Pryor is writing, he spends the morning secluded inside his house, sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen, thinking and typing. In the afternoons, he works outside in the fresh air, herding the sheep or digging the soil, using his body as much as his brain.

Pryor has a straightforward explanation for why he and so many others are fascinated by archaeology. He quotes the first line of L. P. Hartley’s The Go-between – ‘The past is another country’ – and adds a refinement of his own: the past is ‘unreachable, but there’. He has devoted his life to imaginative reconstructions of a country that he can walk over and touch, even smell or taste, but never actually inhabit. He offers a similarly neat paradox to express the difference between prehistoric humanity and ourselves: he describes the inhabitants of the Bronze Age as ‘a different species which is identical to ours’. Over the past few thousand years, human thought and culture has changed completely – and yet, in some sense, humans have not changed at all.

If people from the Bronze Age were suddenly transported into the twenty-first century, once they had overcome their amazement at the physical differences between our lives and theirs, Francis Pryor is convinced that they would be astonished by one thing above all others: the short-termism of modern life. Pryor is passionate about the wastefulness of modern society. Whether we’re consuming junk food, burying disposable nappies, or driving gas-guzzling cars, we seem to be determined to use up the world’s resources as quickly as possible. Looking around, Pryor is depressed by our lust for immediate gratification and the destruction that we leave in our wake. Of course, he appreciates that such wastefulness might be useful to his colleagues. A few thousand years from now, one of his descendants may be searching through the debris, unpicking our rubbish, looking for clues to the way we lived.

Customer Reviews

Splendidly readable stuff
Well researched and very readable account of the archaeology of pre-Roman Britain. I found the early chapters especially interesting, e.g. the Boxgrove site showing the earliest evidence of human habitation in Britain 500,000 years ago, and the remarkable inventiveness of early hunter-gatherers. It did get a bit dry and technical at times in discussing the details of Neolithic and later monuments. The author also sometimes gets a little carried away in describing his or others' theories which seem to me perhaps a bit simplistic, e.g. the wood=life and stone=death theory of late Neolithic/early Bronze age monuments, verging on interpreting facts to fit the theory; the design of Iron age roundhouses mirroring the rising and setting sun also sounded too rigid to me. The author is quite convincing in dismissing the idea of a mass invasion of Neolithic farmers and prefers the theory that it was the idea of farming that swept across Europe to Britain. He cites as evidence DNA from Palaeolithic bones in Cheddar Gorge natching DNA from some modern inhabitants of the same area; on the other hand, there is also DNA evidence from the descendants of "Jasmine, the younger daughter of Eve" from Syria making up a sizeable slice of the British farming population in Neolithic and later society. All in all, a wonderful read that could get almost anyone interested in archaeology and pre-history.

informative but................
enjoyed this book as far as it went BUT in to many chapters it is a celebration of Priors own field of expertise i.e. Flag Fen -whilst I appreciate that one has to write about what one knows best the constant referals to Flag Fen and its surroundings detracted from the overall read

At last, honest History.
The author gives an unbiased account of what IMO our pre-history is all about. One reviewer said 'this is an attempt to air brush the celts out' not so if if actually took the time to study what he is saying, if anyone is guilty of air brushing it was the Victorians who ignored pre-history altogether and there is the fact he starts off by saying celtic traders from the Basque region in Spain were likely to have been the first people to come to our shores. There is a lot of rubbish about the Celts and Saxons of course which is really questioned and in my view very believable. The term 'Celts' was not used to mean people here untill 400 years or so ago so there are a few myths to be questioned and thrown out.
Coupled with the Britain AD book this is compelling stuff, unless of course you like romantic stuff like some other reviewers.