Stranger than Fiction

  Between the Wind and the Water: World Heritage Orkney , by Caroline Wickham-Jones, 2015, describes the Neolithic sites in Orkney that were given World Heritage status. Wickham-Jones explains that “the World Heritage Convention seeks to safeguard the well-being of exceptional sites of cultural and natural value.” In Orkney these sites are all located on the Brodgar peninsula: the settlement Skara Brae; the stone circles Ring of Brodgar and Stones of Stenness; the stone settings called Watch Stone and Barnhouse Stone; and the chambered tomb of Maeshowe. She describes each of these sites in terms of their history, purpose, setting, excavation and significance. The book includes photographs of the sites and their excavations. In addition, she describes the area and inhabitants in the Mesolithic era that preceded the construction of these sites, as well as the following Bronze and Iron Ages, which saw the arrival of the Picts, the Norse and the Romans. In each of these sections,...

  In Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art ,   Michael Camille, former professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, describes and analyzes the artwork on the borders of Medieval manuscripts, stained glass windows, architecture and court decorations. His examples include both realistic and fantastic creatures, and many are incredibly pornographic images, which seem even more bizarre since they are framing themes from the Bible and religious ceremonies. I knew nothing about the subject, but I read this book for a week-long Art History course I’m going to take. This is also my choice for the Culture category of the 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . Each chapter focuses on Art in the Margins of: Chapter 1: Illuminated Manuscripts Chapter 2: Monasteries Chapter 3: Cathedrals Chapter 4: The Court Chapter 5: The City And Chapter 6 is “The End of the Edge,” detailing “the beginning of the demise of the tradition of Gothic marginal representation.” ...

  Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the coming of the Romans by Francis Pryor, 2021, focuses on the prehistory of Great Britain and Ireland through 15 archaeological excavations (in separate sections chronologically from 900,000 years ago to AD 410). Each excavation reveals information about the people, lifestyle and landscape of the corresponding time period. For example, the first four sections are: Scene 1: Britain During the Ages of Ice (900,000-500,000 years ago): Happisburgh – Pakefield – Boxgrove Scene 2: The Persistence of Caves: Life, Death and the Ancestors (30,000 years ago-600 BC): Goat’s Hole Cave, Paviland – Killuragh and Sramore Caves – Robber’s Den Cave Scene 3: Inhabiting the Post-Glacial Landscape: Living on the Plains (9000 BC): The Vale of Pickering – Glacial Lake Flixton Scene 4: From Wood to Stone on Salisbury Plain (8000-3000 BC): The Stonehenge Car Park – The Avenue – Blick Mead Spring – Stonehenge Francis Pryor is an archaeologi...

Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric site in Britain, but there are still many questions about its origins. Who were the people who built it, why was that particular site chosen, and what was its purpose? The Neolithic site of Durrington Walls has been identified as the place where the community lived who conducted the main stage of construction at Stonehenge, but what existed in that area beforehand? The fairly new discovery of Blick Mead, a Mesolithic site only 2 kilometers from Stonehenge (near today’s Amesbury), is helping to provide some answers. The excavations at Blick Mead started in 2005 and have so far revealed evidence of continuous human habitation from 8,000 BCE to 4,000 BCE (the oldest inhabited Mesolithic site in Britain), and that it was the center of a network of paths from throughout southern Britain. This indicates that the area was significant to the prehistoric inhabitants before Stonehenge was built, and was possibly why the site was chosen. The book Blic...