Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNeeds thorough editing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 July 2021
I enjoyed 'Tamed', a previous book by this author so I'm surprised to find that I'm struggling to finish this one.
Perhaps the chapters are too drawn out. We might start with the author's travel to the area of the burial in question, then a description of the nearby town or surrounding countryside. Then we meet the key people involved in the discovery of the burial and the subsequent excavations...etc. Finally we get to the burial itself and to the theories about what it tells us. Then the theories are debunked (why tell us them in the first place?) and finally we end with a piece of fiction, where the author imagines what might have led to the person's demise and how they ended up where they were found.
The truth is that even with the latest analytical techniques, there is only so much that is known. In which case why not write a short, richly illustrated book, rather than padding it out. By the way, there hardly any illustrations and this is a subject where they would have been of great benefit to the reader.
A final gripe is the author's desire to crowbar in some fashionable politics. She seems to take issue with early depictions of neolithic hunter-gatherers as being male. "Where are the women and children?", she asks more than once. Perhaps depicting a barely clothed man was more acceptable than a barely clothed female in those modest/prudish times but ultimately who cares? It is irrelevant to the subject matter of the book. In fairness the author doesn't bang on about these things but why mention them at all? Is there no escape from the tedium of political correctness? Yawn.
The book isn't bad (hence three stars) but if I had my time and money again I'd spend it elsewhere.