An Archaeology of Natural Places

by Richard Bradley

This volume explores why natural places such as caves, mountains, springs and rivers assumed a sacred character in European prehistory, and how the evidence for this can be analysed in the field. It shows how established research on votive deposits, rock art and production sites can contribute to a more imaginative approach to the prehistoric landscape, and can even shed light on the origins of monumental architecture. The discussion is illustrated through a wide range of European examples, and three extended case studies.

An Archaeology of Natural Places extends the range of landscape studies and makes the results of modern research accessible to a wider audience, including students and academics, field archaeologists, and those working in heritage management.

Genres: Archaeology, Nonfiction, History, Prehistory, Anthropology, Academic

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2000

About the author

Richard John Bradley, FSA, FSA Scot, FBA (born 18 November 1946) is a British archaeologist and academic. He specialises in the study of European prehistory, and in particular Prehistoric Britain.

There is more than one author by this name. See also: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more accessible books by Bradley (i.e., I could understand most of this one) on European landscape archaeology, making a few points he developed further nearly two decades later in A Geography of Offerings, such as the need to do more than inventory the weapons, ornaments, metal scraps, and human and animal remains found deposited in European rivers, bogs, forests and other sites from the Mesolithic to the Middle Ages. Bradley's concerned with the history of the items themselves, and with the importance these locations -- and others where prehistoric Europeans prayed, buried the dead, carved symbols into rocks, mined stone and created tools -- held for the people who used them. The evidence ranges from a Saami site in northern Finland to mountaintop altars in Crete, with the highlight for me being an analysis of some mystifying rock carvings along the Baltic in southwestern Sweden that "reads" them by interpreting the carvings in relation to the surrounding landscape. At a few points he refers approvingly to David Lewis-Williams' theories tying prehistoric art to shamanic altered states of consciousness, which was certainly a popular idea in 2000, but I worry that Paul G. Bahn's (Prehistoric Rock Art: Polemics and Progress) blood pressure might have spiked when he read it.

[Ben Shepherd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book.