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Title: The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West by J. P. Mallory, Victor H. Mair ISBN: 0-500-05101-1 Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: June, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (9 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: If you found this book too dull
Comment: read Elizabeth Wayland Barber's "Mummies of Urumchi" instead. It's a great read. She foucses on what we can learn about these people based on (starting from) the textiles the mummies were wrapped in. The result is a fascinating look at a surprising culture. And if you enjoy that, try her earlier book "Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years" too.
Rating: 4
Summary: A fascinating look at one of our modern mysteries.
Comment: This thick volume attempts to answer the question of how a bunch of Caucasian mummies ended up in central China. Scholarly and far-reaching, it delves into linguistics, archaeology, religion, and other disciplines.
It didn't actually dwell on the mummies of Tarim much. Most of it's book scholarship, not field investigation. It tries to show how various populations in China got where they did, using whatever means it can. In this regard, it succeeds. But I wish it'd talked about the actual mummies more than it did. I got occasional glimpses, but nothing more.
Rating: 3
Summary: Lots of academic theorizing to reade, sometimes engaging.
Comment: ...what it is, mainly, is a discussion about the cultural name and the language of the mummies might be. This is fine, and should occupy a chapter, but half the book is specifically related to trying to pin down a name out of Chinese and European sources and where they came from from archaeological and linguistic knowledge.
It seemed to me that the book might better have concentrated on what could be learned of their culture from what we DO know from their burials and with comparisons to how people live in those regions today. There is no in-depth analysis of the items (beyond what you can see for yourself in the photographs) nor comparison of cultural details or even explaining what a nomadic lifestyle would be like, nor discussion of specific practices that might suggest their beliefs. And when mention is made it is done briefly so they can get on with their analysis of the historical basis of Central Asia. Clearly they chose their emphasis simply because they have such limited access to the mummies themselves.
There are several chapters at the end that spell out all the competing ideas of how the Tarim basin may have been populated, which probably belonged in a anthropological journal. But I cannot say the book is not interesting to reade, its just that I kept waiting for a close study of cultural comparisons right until the book ended. For this reason I liked Barber's book better, for her close appraisal of Tarim fabrics and then to speak of how they might have been made. One feature of the mummies was the women with "witch" hats. The authors simply say the real witch's hat was Puritan dress from the 17th century and then blithely go on. Now somehow I believed the Puritans were Christians not pagans, but maybe I'm wrong.
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Title: The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, E. J. W. Barber ISBN: 0393320197 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth by J. P. Mallory ISBN: 0500276161 Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: April, 1991 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk ISBN: 0870234358 Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts Press Pub. Date: March, 1984 List Price(USD): $17.09 |
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Title: Life along the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield ISBN: 0520232143 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 06 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Earthly Remains: The History and Science of Preserved Human Bodies by Michael Parker Pearson, Andrew T. Chamberlain, Michael Parker Pearson ISBN: 0195218523 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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