After the success of the National Road Authority’s Celtic Tiger monograph series, at first glance Battles, Boats and Bones seems a scanty competitor. But you’ve only to open the cover for this impression to be firmly dispelled. Rarely has an archaeological volume been so well done: organisation, layout, illustration, and content combine to make this journey through selected excavations of Northern Ireland both pleasurable and accessible.

The six chapters are themed and each theme illustrated by four detailed excavations. The  book’s aim is not only to publicise the results of archaeological investigations, but also to acknowledge the huge changes that took place in archaeology over the 25 years covered by the volume. But make no mistake, there are big discoveries inside, such as the Bronze Age village at Portrush, and the recently revealed below ground archaeology at the Giant’s Ring, Belfast. This book is an important addition to our knowledge of archaeology in Northern Ireland.

Covering the late Bronze Age to the Roman Conquest, Sharples vaults over specialist boundaries to bridge the previously distinct Late Bronze and Iron Ages, and construct an alternative account of later Prehistoric society. The Wessex region has been intensively studied, and assumptions about its culture have dominated discussions of later Prehistory in Britain.

Sharples’ challenging views about the transformation of society during this time are certain to provoke debate, setting a starting point for a new agenda for the study of the period. The six chapters put everything in context, starting out with a wide lens on landscape and travelling ever more tightly inward through community, the house, the individual, and finally back to Wessex in a new context. A helpful appendix details chronology through characteristic finds and type sites, while the bibliography displays the breadth of knowledge synthesised in the research. An important work.

One wonders at the cheek of Cheek, in that her leading lady’s black shiny boots and frilly skirts hardly call to mind a field supervisor or serious academic. But perhaps that is the point: much has been said lately about the identity crisis in archaeology, the lack of diversity, and the problem of the way that archaeologists are themselves perceived. Molly Bonner, and characters like her, could go far in providing alternative viewpoints about who actually does archaeology: that you can still be young and frilly – but still quite good at what you do.

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‘The Artificial Ape’, a new book written by Timothy Taylor, tackles this question, coming to the startling conclusion that rather than humans evolving to create technology, technology evolved to create humans.

Things, literally, came before people…

Beginning with the observation that humans are the weakest of the seven species of ape on the planet, Taylor asks the simple question – how did we manage to come out on top? An assessment of modern day primates shows that we somehow evolved from A to C, losing our biological advantages whilst quadrupling brain size. What’s not clear is how we got through the B steps, or what the selective pressures were for a smart but weaker ape to arise.

The evolution of intelligence is usually explained as the consequence of an increasingly involved and demanding social life, leading to the development of larger brains. By applying our newfound cranial capacity to the invention of tool use, we were eventually granted mastery over the natural world. But this actually ‘leap frogs’ the B steps, and leads to what Taylor calls the ‘smart biped paradox.’

Upright walking places significant mechanical constraints on the pelvis. It narrows the birth canal, and should have ruled out any subsequent cranial expansion; and as expected, for the first three million years of upright walking brain size remained relatively unchanged. But then the genus Homo emerged, and over the space of half a million years, brain size doubled, tripled and quadrupled into the modern range. The secret, argues Taylor, is in the timing.

“This book insists that there was an actual moment when we became human. It was a moment long before we became intelligent in any modern sense. It was a moment seized by a female as, for the very first time, she turned to technology to protect her child. In that moment, everything that we were going to become was made not just possible, but inevitable.” Page 2.

Darwin’s solution was based on sexual selection. Our early female ancestors would have a natural inclination to smarter, large headed males, with male and female offspring benefiting from this choice through an evolutionary increase in brain size. But the trouble with this model is that it doesn’t match the evidence – there is a gap of 192,000 years between the occurrence of the first stone tools in the archaeological record and the emergence of the first species of the larger brained genus homo. Taylor’s argument is that it was our engagement with technology, particularly the baby sling, which allowed us to assume control of our evolution. With the baby sling we became a ‘marsupial ape,’ able to continue our gestation outside the womb.

Our brains were imprinted with an increasingly complex culture – ‘the substrate for the development of language and symbolic culture, which essentially hard-wires itself into our biology ex utero.’ This changed the ‘algebra of the biologically possible,’ undermining the process of natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Taylor extends his analysis into the present day, arguing that biologically we are getting weaker still – but by pushing the frontiers of scientific technology into a cybernetic realm of prosthetics, intelligent implants and artificially modified genes, this no longer matters. We are an ‘Artificial Ape,’ evolved by technology that is itself driven by its own unfolding logic.

The Artificial Ape

This book is excellently written, meticulously researched and provocatively pitched. It floats like a butterfly; it stings like a bee. Whilst some readers (of a certain theoretical persuasion) will be driven to distraction by Taylor’s argument, they better bring their ‘A’ game if they want to take him down.

Timothy Taylor is a Yorkshire Dales cave archaeologist, Reader in archaeology at Bradford University and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of World Prehistory, and he has written two other popular anthropology books – The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture, and The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death. As a regular contributor to popular science TV programmes and websites, his success rests on the ability to explain complex thought with artful simplicity – a skill that appears to be woefully lacking in the archaeological profession.

Why, we might ask, has there never been a prize-winning popular archaeologist writer? Why has an archaeologist never won the Pulitzer Prize, or a ‘science booker’ – no Richard Dawkins, no Jared Diamond’s? Contrary to Mortimer Wheeler’s advice, it seems we are content to go on letting archaeologists dig up things not people. For every Staffordshire Hoard that captures the public’s attention, there are a thousand self-satisfied archaeologists happy to turn out yet another book peering into the minutiae of their own subject. Big answers to little questions.

By asking what makes us human, and reflecting on what that might mean for our future, this book bucks the trend.

Watch Taylor lecture on The Artificial Ape here…

And buy it here…

Exhibition Review – National Museums Scotland

Few would consider the popular computer game Grand Theft Auto – notorious for its adult content and violent themes – to be a reliable witness to our daily lives. But 800 years from now, if all that survived of our modern world were scant archaeological remains and a copy of this controversial game, what conclusions would archaeologists of the future draw?

The Lewis Chessmen are some of the most famous treasures to have emerged from Scottish soil, and 30 of the original 93 ivory pieces are now the subject of a major new travelling exhibition from the National Museum of Scotland. The exhibition centres on new research recently published in Medieval Archaeology, including an analysis of the facial features of the chess pieces by forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson. This is the ‘unmasking’ of the exhibition’s title, and the curators have sought to explain the relevance of this new work to what we already know about the hoard through folk tales and archaeological evidence.

The facial expressions are what first struck Oliver Postgate, creator of the children’s TV series Bagpuss, The Clangers, and Noggin the Nog; expecting Viking barbarity, he found “essentially kindly and non-belligerent characters… strongly dismayed by the prospect of contest.” Perhaps it is this that gives the objects such a sprit of playfulness, and the exhibition brings this to life with an interactive area for chess, hnefatafle and checkers, as well as an engaging website aimed at the younger visitor. Unfortunately, the more serious business of archaeological analysis is less well handled, with inconsistent captioning, poor grammar, and basic errors crowding out the key message that this exhibition is based on new research. The chess pieces, for instance, were ‘the inspiration for J. K. Rowland’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.’ Whoever was responsible for the final edit certainly didn’t go to wizard school.

But these distractions are minor not major, check not check mate, and given that the pieces have been on permanent exhibition for the last 170 years, it would be hard for the curators to muck this one up. The original hoard (78 chess pieces, 14 plain discs and a buckle, perhaps fastening the original bag in which the objects were placed) was first unveiled at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1831 by Roderick Ririe, and like the world to which they originally belong, the circumstances of discovery remain clouded in mystery. They were found in a sand dune on Uig Strand in the west of the island by a crofter called Malcolm MacLeod (although he left no personal account, and was never questioned by archaeologists at the time). The pieces have been carved from walrus ivory likely to have been traded along ‘the north way’ – from Greenland, down to Iceland, the Faroe Islands and into Scandinavia – a route that had enabled successive waves of Viking raiders and settlers to colonise further and further afield. Stylistic analysis dates the chessmen to the 12^th century AD, sometime after the period named for the Norse warriors who went ‘i viking’ or ‘raiding.’ But like the Icelandic sagas from the same period, the shield gnashing berserkers, anxious queens and broad shouldered kings hint at a world redolent with Viking imagery.

The new analysis aimed to evaluate the two competing explanations for the hoard – was it a hastily buried merchant’s cargo on route from Trondheim to the rich markets of Dublin, or did the hoard belong to a native King of  the Islands, grown rich from links with the Scandinavian world and the Norwegian homeland. This question is difficult to assess – walrus ivory is hardwearing and leaves few clues of wear and tear indicating the age of the objects before they were finally buried. The study has shown, however, that the chessmen were carved by five different craftsmen, and both the similarity in the size of the pieces and the occasional errors of detail have led the researchers to the conclusion that these were all produced in the same workshop – perhaps a games compendium to fulfil a single order.

If there are any answers to this enigmatic archaeological puzzle, the chessmen themselves remain tight lipped. Like future archaeologists pondering their solitary copy of Grand Theft Auto, we must conclude that more needs to be known of the contemporary society that played the game, and this has to mean further archaeological work on the Isle of Lewis. As the exhibition moves on to Aberdeen in October 2010, Shetland in January 2011, and Stornoway in April of the same year – temporarily returning some of the original pieces to the Island where they were originally found – it’s clear that this match is far from entering it’s end game.

The contest continues…

Review and photos by Marion Ravenwood

Hence, one of the four sites covered by this volume lies to the east of the Medway, and the other three… well, you get the idea. So is this just a clever title in search of a book, or is there anything more substantial to this seemingly random collection of sites other than their geographical connection?

They were all excavated by Wessex Archaeolgy, one of the largest archaeology companies in the UK, and their disparate nature gives an excelent insight into both the type and standard of work undertaken in the commercial sector. There are two linear schemes here (the Weatherlees-Margate-Broadstairs gas pipeline and the West Malling Bypass) as well as a large housing development (Fulston Manor) and supermarket development (Manston Road, Ramsgate). Over the couse of these excavations it became clear that a new type of sunken feature building was emerging that seemed to be particular to Kent. Dating to the medieval period, these buildings combine uses as bakeries, breweries and/or kitchens. This is what motivated the publication, and these different sites are drawn together further with a sythesis chapter analysing this new type of sunken feature building.

‘Publish or perish,’ is a stick that archaeologists use to batter each other into writing more, and no one takes as much stick as commercial archaeology. Wessex Archaeology have bucked the trend here, identifying a distinct pattern in the material evidence and researching it’s implications. They have produced a useful regional study, and the drive to publish these results has to be applauded.

The perishers meanwhile, live to dig another day.

Kentish Sites… A miscellany of four archaeological sites, by Phil Andrews, Kirsten Egging Dinwiddy, Chris Ellis, Andrew Hutcheson, Christopher Philpotts, Andrew B. Powell and Jörn Schuster

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Harding has excavated round-houses in environments as varied and remote as lowland Britain and the Western Isles, and this breadth of knowledge is employed to great effect. The book begins by situating Iron Age Britain in its European context, contrasting the settlement tradition of rectangular houses in Continental Europe, with the Central and Northern European evidence for houses of circular plan.

Working through the evidence, post-hole and foundation trench structures from lowland Britain are assessed alongside the substantial stone built Brochs and Wheel Houses of the Atlantic north and west.  The engineering implications of these structures are examined in a chapter dedicated to experimental reconstruction, and the book concludes with a consideration of the social and political aspects of building circular houses, particularly in response to the Roman military occupation where circular structure could have been a potent symbol of opposition.

This is a meticulously researched and well-illustrated volume, and is a significant contribution to Iron Age studies.

The Iron Age Round-House by D.W. Harding

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Rising to this challenge, a great number of field archaeologists have written about life and work at the trowel’s edge; and of these plentiful books there are a handful that have gone on to influence a generation. From Mortimer Wheeler’s Archaeology from the Earth, through to Phillip Barker’s Techniques of Archaeological Excavation, and onwards to Steve Roskams in-depth elucidation of the MoLAS excavation manual, occasionally there are pivotal moments when key ideas in excavation are published in a useable form. Martin Carver’s Archaeological Investigation ranks as one of those important and influential works.

Drawing on a multitude of examples from around the world, with explanatory photos, plans and maps on nearly every page, Carver has brought his considerable excavation experience to bear on this topic, guiding the reader step-by-step from initial project design to final publication. The book is intuitively divided into four parts, and as the author points out in the preface, this structure mirrors the traditional career path of a life spent in archaeology.

Part 1 returns us to the undergraduate lecture theatre, with a discussion of first principles and how excavation strategies have developed in line with archaeological theory. Those first few tentative steps into the field as a Site Assistant are given clear direction by Part 2: a review of field techniques and the most appropriate circumstances for their application. In Part 3 we are taken through the process of writing up, and the responsibility that comes with supervising or directing excavations, as well as the duty to report our work to varied groups of stakeholders. Part 4 takes the reader into the project design process, covering pertinent issues for decision-makers.

This is an ambitious book mining a lifetime of rich archaeological experience. Prior to his current post as Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York and editor of Antiquity, Carver set up BUFAU (Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit), a busy contracting unit focused on development-led archaeology. He has garnered an international reputation as Director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project, in addition to his latest venture excavating the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack, Tarbat, Scotland.

Nevertheless, this book isn’t content to trade on the author’s impeccable credentials. There’s a Big Idea here – a drawing together of key concepts of evaluation, design and embedded interpretation that Carver calls ‘Field Research Procedure.’ Scholars of excavation theory will know that this value-led system, with its emphasis on design, stakeholders, deposit models, recovery levels and publication, has been described by Carver elsewhere. All the same, this book represents the first time these new ways of doing things have been brought together into a coherent and comprehensive guide.

For a previous generation of archaeologists, the long hours spent getting to grips with a spade were an essential rite of initiation. Today there are many different types of archaeologist, and not all of them dig holes in the ground. Specialisation has brought great benefits to the profession, but a side-effect is that career paths have become increasingly inflexible; colleagues with little field training are regularly required to make difficult planning decisions or monitor work on complex excavations. With this book, Carver points a clear way through the system, doing much to help us all be more fully-rounded archaeologists.

Archaeological Investigation, by Martin Carver
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The monograph presents the proceedings of the NRA National Archaeology Seminar, an annual seminar series catering specifically for a non-specialist audience. These papers were delivered in 2008, and as in previous years, the event focussed on a particular theme, assessing the recently discovered evidence from highways projects for food production, processing and consumption, with rural settlement sites ranging in date from the Neolithic to the 19th Century.

One of the main criticisms levelled at the commercial archaeological sector is that it remains focussed on producing inaccessible client reports – the so called ‘grey literature’ – at the expense of non-specialist syntheses and rigorously researched publication. The NRA Monograph series shows what can be achieved when the developer takes an active role in ensuring that the public benefit from their considerable investment in excavation.

Dining and Dwelling – Archaeology and the National Roads Authority Monograph Series No. 6

(National Roads Authority)

Find it here…