Details
More than quarter of a century ago Richard Bradley published The Passage of Arms. It was conceived as An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive Deposits, but, as the author concedes, these terms were too narrowly focused for the complex subject of deliberate deposition and the period covered too short. A Geography of Offerings has been written to provoke a reaction from archaeologists and has two main aims. The first is to move this kind of archaeology away from the minute study of ancient objects to a more ambitious analysis of ancient places and landscapes. The second is to recognise that problems of interpretation are not restricted to the pre-Roman period. Mesolithic finds have a place in this discussion, and so do those of the 1st millennium AD. Archaeologists studying individual periods confront with similar problems and the same debates are repeated within separate groups of scholars – but they arrive at different conclusions. Here, the author presents a review that brings these discussions together and extends across the entire sequence. Rather than offer a comprehensive survey, this is an extended essay about the strengths and weaknesses of current thinking regarding specialised deposits, which encompass both sacrificial deposits characterised by large quantities of animal and human bones and other collections which are dominated by finds of stone or metal artefacts. It considers current approaches and theory, the histories of individual artefacts and the landscape and physical context of the of places where they were deposited, the character of materials, the importance of animism and the character of ancient cosmologies.
Table of Contents
Chapter One Beginning again
Chapter Two A chapter of accidents
The Broadward hoard
The Mästermyr hoard
Reassessments
Bridges and troubled waters
Iron Age deposits at La Tène
Roman artefacts from the Rhine near Mainz
Reassessments
Literary sources
Ritual and non-ritual, religious and secular deposits
The ubiquity of water
Hidden in plain sight
Chapter Three Faultlines in contemporary research
Chronological faultlines
Controversy and uncertainty
The sources of confusion
Unfinished business
The next stage
Chapter Four Proportional representation
The variety of deposits
Excavations at two spring deposits
Excavations at other wetland deposits
Excavations at dryland deposits
A question of scale
A question of time
Summary
Chapter five The hoard as a still life
Pronkstillevens
Accumulations
Display
Summary and conclusions
Chapter Six The nature of things
Technologies and myths
Stone and metal
Metals
Chapter Seven A kind of regeneration
The final act
Whole and undamaged artefacts
Incomplete or damaged artefacts
Friendly fire
Fragmentation
Weights
Numbers
the last act
Chapter 8 Vanishing point
Sinking treasures
Giving and taking
Artefacts with attitude
Profiting from loss
Exquisite corpses
Chapter Nine A guide to strange places
Naming places
Going under
Going forward
Northern lights
Southern comforts
A note of caution
Chapter 10 Thresholds and transitions
Introduction
Bridges, fords and causeways
Other kinds of boundaries
River names and their associations
The character of water
The character of mountains
The earth compels
A final reflection
Reviews & Quotes
"Building upon, but greatly expanding, his earlier influential work, this small book will be widely read and much appreciated for the way in which it demonstrates that ‘big data’ also require big ideas."
Robert Witcher
Antiquity
(16/06/2017)
"This elegant, stimulating, dialogous book will hopefully appeal to all archaeologists, whatever their period persuasion… This book readily bears several reading either of its entirety or its discreet but connected parts and its compact, travel-anywhere size helps to facilitate that."
Mark A. Hall
Medieval Archaeology
(05/02/2019)
"A pocket-sized archaeology book that is packed full of useful information…accessible both to those new to the subject and to those with a detailed knowledge of individual periods or types of evidence. "
Sophia Adams
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
(11/05/2017)
"The relatively small size of this book belies its ambition. A Geography of Offerings is as accessible as it is erudite, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in ancient landscapes and specialised deposits, regardless of specialism… a fresh perspective on a subject that I believed could not be usefully reconsidered. Bradley has proven me wrong."
Ceri Houlbrook
Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture
(02/01/2018)
