Atlas of Ancient Archaeology

by Jacquetta Hawkes

Traces the patterns of cultures and civilizations down to the beginning of the classical world, region by region, around the globe. This guide is designed for scholars and travellers alike.

Genres: History, Archaeology, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Jacquetta Hawkes OBE FBA (5 August 1910 – 18 March 1996) was an English archaeologist and writer. She was the first woman to study the Archaeology & Anthropology degree course at the University of Cambridge. A specialist in prehistoric archaeology, she excavated Neanderthal remains at the Palaeolithic site of Mount Carmel with Yusra and Dorothy Garrod. She was a representative for the UK at UNESCO, and was curator of the "People of Britain" pavilion at the Festival of Britain.

Her second husband was J.B. Priestley.

Reviews

[Octavia Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

Granted this is a bit dated now, but it's still interesting in that its short entries often caught my imagination enough to go looking for more information elsewhere. To be honest I'd rather some of those entries focused more on the context of particular sites and less on their measurements, but as different regions were described by different contributors, some entries were more readable than others.

More seriously in a book that calls itself an atlas, there is also a total absence of south-east Asian, Indonesian, Australasian or Pacific Island sites (even Angkor Wat, Borobudur, Easter Island, and 50,000 year old Australian rock art is dismissed). I can't reasonably expect an atlas of this kind to cover every archaeological site - and the introduction admits it has had to select for space - but when you're ignoring entire continents I think you need to take a serious look at your table of contents.

And this is petty, as most of the illustrations were very helpful, but whoever made the poor decision to have tiny black type on a dark green background in some of them... boo! It's well nigh unreadable.

[Papias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated, but full of cool maps and diagrams.