https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024035-home-time-travellers-tales-from.h... ( )

The title of this book (Time-Traveller's Tales) gives the misleading impression that these are loose stories about British prehistory. Instead, it is indeed a survey of British pre- and proto-history by a very experienced archaeologist. I didn't know Francis Pryor (° 1945) at all, but in Britain he apparently has a good reputation as a promoter of archeology on television, and he can look back on more than 40 years of fieldwork. Pryor does not practice archeology from the study room; he also makes no secret of the fact that he detests scientists who only look at the past with a theoretical perspective. This is certainly evident from this book, where he constantly returns to his own excavation work, especially in the region of Fenland (East Anglia): as a reader you get almost tangible contact with the soil (actually mainly the mud), and you also learn the know the social interaction behind the archaeological work (up to and including the pints at the local pub). That makes reading this highly specialized book entertaining and digestible, but you have to tolerate the very extroverted personality that Pryor is (with a strong anarchistic conviction). The author expresses himself in very idiosyncratic visions of the subject matter, which are not always sound, but which encourage reflection and debate. The great weakness of this book is its almost exclusively British view, without an eye for the broader context. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3925864231 ( )