Michael Parker Pearson

It could be argued that over recent decades we’ve come to understand what the mysterious monument known as Stonehenge is, and how it was built. By widening its focus away from the monument itself this account of the Stonehenge Riverside Project and its recent discoveries goes a long way to answering why it was built and used.

This approach places the monument in the context of its landscape, the wider pan-island culture, and its role as part of a large complex of adjacent Neolithic monuments, settlements, and landforms. Far from being the isolated stone circle we see today it was part of a evolving thriving culture where it was just one (but probably the largest) of many henges.

While the conclusions and observations in this book are fascinating it does drag a bit mid-narrative as it gets bogged down in the detail of how a modern archeological dig is conducted and recorded.… (mehr)

"Drury was both English and Malagasy...a Cockney Tandroy, fully belonging to neither society"
By sally tarbox on 14 July 2017
Format: Hardcover
Mildly interesting account of the life of Londoner Robert Drury, who in 1701, aged 13, set out to forge a career at sea. The East Indiaman came to grief, and the teenager - who many years later was to publish his memoirs - found himself shipwrecked for many years in Madagascar, a harsh, violent and primitive world.
The archaeologist author gives plenty of background information - life in 1700s London, piracy in the Indian Ocean, the East India company...
Then we follow him and his colleagues as they attempt to find traces of Drury's life in modern-day Madagascar. Hampered by the temporary villages of the people, the lack of written records and Drury's own unreliable memories and phonetic spelling of local names ("King Hosintany... turns up in Drury's book under the delightful name of Woozington"), they nonetheless manage to locate many of the locations, while giving a picture of life in the remote south of the island.
The book finishes by looking at the controversy that persists over the book: was Drury really the author, or was it a later work by Daniel Defoe, a fiction masquerading as a true story? The research of the author leads him to conclude it is genuine, though likely edited by another.
I learned a lot and it's well researched, but wasn't hugely gripped by the writing.… (mehr)

Got the Kindle edition after watching the National Geographic special on the Stonehenge Riverside Project, and love reading the science behind the story. This book is world-class heritage interpretation, and Mike Parker Pearson is a delightfully lucid and capable writer and an unassuming giant on whose shoulders the next generation of archaeology will stand.

Postscript: bought the hardback edition at Stonehenge itself. What a difference to see the stones in context as one landmark in a rich ritual landscape.… (mehr)