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Book Reviews

Book Reviews Adam Stout, Creating Prehistory: Druids, Ley Hunters & Archaeologists in Pre-war Britain (2008) Blackwell, Oxford, 328 pages, illustrated, ISBN 9781505155052, £22.99. It would be easy to misunderstand this book. It does not, I think, suggest that ley lines are a fact of prehistory or that the Druidic vision of Stonehenge is better than the archaeological one. Yet by respecting themes typically dismissed by archaeologists, Stout has created an important new history of the emergence of modern British archaeology. His enthusiasm and wisdom, his considerable new research and his engaging style make this both entertaining and convincing. Our archaeology, says Stout, is ‘still set within an “intellectual aesthetic” adopted in the 1920s’. Between the two world wars, the main era considered, an ‘heroic band’ (O.G.S. Crawford’s phrase) succeeded in creating a profession of scientific archaeology, whose narrow focus was the material evidence for human progress. They had their journal ( Antiquity), their university institutions where the techniques could be learnt (in Cambridge and London) and, soon, their Council for British Archaeology and their magazine (The Archaeological Newsletter). The ‘radical archaeology’ of the 1920s, says Stout, became the ‘orthodox archaeology’ – confident and professional, but ‘lamentably under- theorised’. Put this baldly, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Landscapes Taylor & Francis

Book Reviews

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Landscapes , Volume 9 (2): 20 – Sep 1, 2008
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2008 Maney Publishing
ISSN
2040-8153
eISSN
1466-2035
DOI
10.1179/lan.2008.9.2.106
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Adam Stout, Creating Prehistory: Druids, Ley Hunters & Archaeologists in Pre-war Britain (2008) Blackwell, Oxford, 328 pages, illustrated, ISBN 9781505155052, £22.99. It would be easy to misunderstand this book. It does not, I think, suggest that ley lines are a fact of prehistory or that the Druidic vision of Stonehenge is better than the archaeological one. Yet by respecting themes typically dismissed by archaeologists, Stout has created an important new history of the emergence of modern British archaeology. His enthusiasm and wisdom, his considerable new research and his engaging style make this both entertaining and convincing. Our archaeology, says Stout, is ‘still set within an “intellectual aesthetic” adopted in the 1920s’. Between the two world wars, the main era considered, an ‘heroic band’ (O.G.S. Crawford’s phrase) succeeded in creating a profession of scientific archaeology, whose narrow focus was the material evidence for human progress. They had their journal ( Antiquity), their university institutions where the techniques could be learnt (in Cambridge and London) and, soon, their Council for British Archaeology and their magazine (The Archaeological Newsletter). The ‘radical archaeology’ of the 1920s, says Stout, became the ‘orthodox archaeology’ – confident and professional, but ‘lamentably under- theorised’. Put this baldly,

Journal

Landscapes – Taylor & Francis

Published: Sep 1, 2008

References

  • ‘Tombs for the living’
  • ‘Hail to the chiefdom? The quest for social archaeology’
  • ‘Kirby Hall and its Gardens: Excavations in 1997-1994’