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Title: Written in Bones: How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead by Paul G. Bahn ISBN: 1-55297-659-9 Publisher: Firefly Books Pub. Date: March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great introductory book
Comment: As an introductory book to archeology and anthropology, this book is without peer. It's individual case studies are detailed enough to spark interest, but short enough not to bog down in details. There are lots of color photographs so the reader can see what the writer is trying to describe. The case studies cover many different parts of the world, including some that one doesn't readily connect with archeology, and many time periods, from 1.5 million years ago to a couple of hundred years ago.
From these case studies one can begin to understand how ancient bodies are yielding their secrets to forensic science. Each case study produces more revelations. For me one of the most amazing was "The Wife of the Marquis of Dai" who died in China some 160 years before the birth of Christ. Her body is almost perfectly preserved and it has been discovered that she suffered from about 10 diseases, including tuberculosis, but that she died from a heart attack due to overeating.
I found this book a delight. I've always been impressed by the way forensic anthropologists can sample, analyze and deduce human stories from these ancient bones. This book presents the results in a very readable fashion and should help to create wider interest and understanding of this fascinating topic.
Rating: 4
Summary: Broad-based regionally and by period
Comment: Written in Bones is a multi-authored volume of articles edited by Paul Bahn, who coauthored along with Colin Renfrew my favorite book on archaeology, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice. I had therefore expected something a little more cutting edge in this department and so was a little disappointed. Other readers will probably not be. As with any book with several authors the quality of the writing varies from chapter to chapter according to the abilities of the various sources. In some instances the word choices and grammar suggested that a foreign language speaker or his translator had make an awkward word selection, in others it might have been an editing failure, but the overall style is very lucid and rapidly read. I took about an afternoon to read it.
Some of the material was already known to me from other sources; other information was new and fun to read. Because most of my study has been conducted in ancient history, in particular the Near East, Greece and Rome, I found the studies of modern remains and those in Chinese and Andean sites were of more interest.
Vilnius and the Ghosts of the Grande Armee was particularly arresting, describing as it does the tragic fate of the bulk of Napoleon's army during his ill-conceived Russian campaign. High-mountain Inca Sacrifices updated me on the discovery and examination of the freeze-dried remains of children sacrificed in the Andes Mountains. The find given the name Juanita was known to me, but much research has been done since her discovery almost a decade ago. Since I have recently taken an interest in post-conquest English history (inspired by a particularly good series of murder mysteries) I found the article Anne Mowbray and the Skeletons in the Tower, a discussion of the murders of the nephews of Richard III, enjoyable. It filled in a knowledge gap and extended my period of interest a little.
Most of the stories are simple, general descriptions of human remains and their relevance to the historical record of human kind. They should appeal to the casual reader with junior high school reading skills or above, and require no prior study in archaeology. They will not bog the reader down in professional jargon or differences and might even inspire the reader to do further reading on a particular period of interest.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fascinating, But a Little Dry
Comment: "Written in Bones" explains what human remains can tell us about how people lived in the distant past. The book covers natural deaths, deliberate deaths (murders and massacres), burials, mummies and mummifications, as well as how ancient people lived and what they ate, all in 36 chapters. Each chapter is an article written by an expert on the subject, with editor Paul Bahn supplying the overall organization and continuity.
Because the chapters are written by different authors, they vary substantially in quality. Some are well-written and provide a context for the stories they tell; others are fairly dry and look as though they were based on academic articles with the footnotes removed. On the whole, however, the book is fascinating-- at times, it's even graphic and unsettling, especially when it deals with child sacrifice, murder, mayhem and (to the modern mind) rather bizarre burial practices.
If you are interested in the subjects covered by this book, here are a few other recommendations: Chamberlain & Pearson, "Earthly Remains: The History and Science of Preserved Bodies" (2002); David & Archbold, "Conversations with Mummies" (2000); Wilson, "Past Lives: Unlocking the Secrets of Our Ancestors" (2001); and Richards, "Meet the Ancestors." I found the last two of these books to be especially fascinating, because they devote a substantial amount of space to showing what the owners of the excavated skeletons would have looked like in life (something that "Written in Bones" does only in a few chapters).
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Title: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach ISBN: 0393050939 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Silent Witness: How Forensic Anthropology Is Used to Solve the World's Toughest Crimes by Roxana Ferllini Timms, Cyril Wecht, Roxana Ferllini ISBN: 1552976246 Publisher: Firefly Books Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: No Bone Unturned : The Adventures of a Top Smithsonian Forensic Scientist and the Legal Battle for America's Oldest Skeletons by Jeff Benedict ISBN: 0060199237 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 25 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Flesh and Bone: An Introduction to Forensic Anthropology by Myriam Nafte ISBN: 0890896380 Publisher: Carolina Academic Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Bones by Douglas Ubelaker, Henry Scammell ISBN: 0871319047 Publisher: M Evans & Co Pub. Date: 15 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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