studying for some particular purpose? Well, any of Sir
Mortimer Wheeler's books would be good fun and sound
archaeology; I'm thinking of a hook like Still Digging, which
is very personal. Then the Thames and Hudson series, Peoples
and Places gives an excellent account of areas of the world
at certain periods, e.g. early Christian Ireland, or
Prehistoric Brittany. Now, one of these to suit personal
taste would be a good choice. Some hooks with titles like
Archaeology or Digging up the Past, suggest a wider coverage
and more general treatment than they in fact give. That
latter title, by Sir Leonard Woolley, gives a very readable
account of Egypt and the near East and might well be one of
your three books, if that field interests you. Digging up
History is a finely illustrated general account of modern
archaeology, quite readable, but it's a big book. It is by
Edward Bacon, who is archaeological contributor to the
Illustrated London News. Finally a warning: beware of
bewitching titles like Children of the Sun, The old Straight
Track, and books on the great pyramid; they are like
narcotic drugs, plausable and entrancing, but you will find
them baseless when coldly examined by an impartial mind. You
see, the human mentality loves to discover so-called simple
laws. That's why Newton's apparently simple fundamental laws
of motion were, and still are, much preferred by the majority
of people, to the complications introduced by Einstein's
relativity. Much diligent research had been done by those
people who have written such books, and perhaps it's unkind,
though true, to call them cranks. Even if their deductions
and theories can afterwards be shown to be false, the corpus
of facts they accumulated can't fail to fit in somewhere, in
the ever more detailed picture of the past which archaeolo-
gists are generally seeking. So I would say, don't read
their books, except as pure fun; remember the information
they have piled up may be useful to the professional
archaeologist if he can sort it out from the dross that
usually accompanies it. So, in answer to this question, I
would say such general books as Peoples and Places, of the
area that interests you, Sir Mortimer Wheeler's books, and
some general book like Bacon's Digging up History.
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