So there are the bones of a good book here - and the bones have been gnawed of every scrap of meat. But for me the stylistic distractions meant it read more like a disarticulated skeleton and never really hung together as a single body of work. Burial 3: Cheddar man and five others, dating to 9,080 and 14,700 years ago respectively. The bones from the more ancient skeletons show clear evidence of having been butchered and eaten by other humans. In summary, I was disappointed. I read Ancestors in the hope of learning more about prehistoric Britons. In the event, I mostly learned about British archaeologists, who are, in broad outline, pretty similar to American molecular biologists or German physicists, or academics anywhere. The author doesn’t let speculation get out of control regarding possible belief or cultural systems. Interesting that cannibalism is now a well established behaviour for some of the peoples excavated! Though whether for food or ceremonial reasons is unclear. The word "archaeology" can mean two things -- it can refer to the things that archaeologists are interested in or the things that archaeologists do. Typically when someone says, "I'm interested in archaeology" you would assume they meant the former: that they are interested in early humans, particularly as reflected in their material remains. But if that person was a sociologist speaking in her professional capacity, you might instead think she means the second thing: the activities and interactions of archaeologists. I will refer to the first subject by the shorthand "human prehistory" and the second "archaeologistology".

I’m happier with the dry factual side of the book really. The author is honest in saying what is and is not possible to determine from these excavations - it’s very hard to say anything about the culture, or what they believed, though grave goods and burial positions can give hints, strong ones even. It takes some time for archeologists to be even sure at what stage genuine graves were made as opposed to the human remains being accidentally buried by natural forces! This may not seem like that much stuff to us, but compared to everyone else buried in the same period it represented huge wealth - ten times as much as is usually found in a burial. And much more than will have been buried with Queen Elizabeth II. Anything missing? So while there is a lot of great, and very up to date, stuff in this book, I felt too distracted from it too frequently to consistently enjoy the reading experience. Conclusion

Table of Contents

As a huge fan of Time Team and Digging for Britain I was always going to buy this book. As is the case with the written word this is a much more detailed version of those two programs. Burial 5: The Amesbury Archer from 2400-2300 BCE i.e. 4,400 years ago, buried a few miles from Stonehenge. When future archaeologist manage to relocate the ruins of Windsor chapel, buried underneath a decommissioned 6th millennium spaceport, they will find a very modest burial for a lady who was head of state for about 140 million people around the world: the bones, a few personal jewels, the odd button - and no sign at all of the ceremonial wooden wand which will have rotten away to nothing. 3 Historic England staff with team members from ULAS/University of Leicester during the excavations of a mosaic pavement at the Rutland Villa Project (Image: BBC/Rare TV/Historic England Archive) I also found her dwellings on whether or not the earliest burials WERE deliberate burials or just left to nature fascinating and the development of the concept of an “after-life”. And when these ancient burials were discovered how Christian religions attempted to reconcile these discoveries with the stories of the Bible e.g. the great flood.

An audio-version of this book has been sitting in my audible app library for a while now: prehistory, ancient burials, bones, paleontology -- of course, I had to buy it. I finally got to it on the verge of a trip to Britain -- after all, what could be a better suited pre-travel read than a history of Britain in seven burials.;) It took but a small step to name this skeleton the Red Lady, or – as he romantically preferred – the Witch of Paviland. She might even, he delicately alludes, have been a prostitute, owing to the location of a Roman camp nearby. This is a terrific, timely and transporting book - taking us heart, body and mind beyond history, to the fascinating truth of the prehistoric past and the present' Bettany HughesBecause the chemical signatures in food and water are different in different locations, archaeologists can make informed guesses about whether the skeletons that they find grew up locally or not - by analysing their teeth enamel. THE FUNNY THING IS, as inaccessible as prehistoric peoples might seem today, their culture still defines our landscape. In hillforts; in long barrows. A popular archeology book about bones found in the ground and what they tell us, using old and new techniques, about the people who’ve inhabited Britain from the Stone Ages onwards.