Neal Ascherson's Top Book Recommendations
Want to know what books Neal Ascherson recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Neal Ascherson's favorite book recommendations of all time.
Recommended by Neal Ascherson, and 1 others. Neal AschersonIn 1986 in Britain something very dramatic happened; the result of which was to institutionalize the ideas of Peter Ucko. At the time the official world organization of archaeologists was an ancient, very decrepit, frightfully Eurocentric organization called the IUPPS, which stands for International Union of Proto and Prehistorians, largely centered in Western Europe and France. They were largely... (Source)
Recommended by Neal Ascherson, and 1 others. Neal AschersonYour fifth book, Shanks and Tilly’s Reconstructing Archaeology is part of the post-processual movement. Can you tell us a bit about the field? Post processual archaeology is very much to do with the application of postmodernism to archaeological thought and the study of the past. Its an untidy bag of ideas, including neo-Marxism, feminist archaeology, cognitive archaeology, contextual... (Source)
This invaluable classic provides the framework for the development of American archaeology during the last half of the 20th century.
In 1958 Gordon R. Willey and Philip Phillips first published Method and Theory in American Archaeology—a volume that went through five printings, the last in 1967 at the height of what became known as the new, or processual, archaeology. The advent of processual archaeology, according to Willey and Phillips, represented a "theoretical debate . . . a question of whether archaeology should be the... more
Recommended by Neal Ascherson, and 1 others. Neal AschersonWilley and Phillips said: “American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing”. It was a huge breakthrough in archaeology, it was really breaking out of a narrow field and saying archaeology is about people. The archaeological purpose is to answer questions about humans and human society, not just to build up artifact classifications. The thing about these New Archaeologists, Lewis Binford... (Source)
Recommended by Neal Ascherson, and 1 others. Neal AschersonYes, Vera Childe’s Progress in Archaeology, published in 1944. Childe became one of the great archaeologists of his time and his account of cultural evolution is very powerful and convincing. Although people have moved away from these ideas in many respects it is still a very important and influential book. (Source)
Nel 1930 Aghata Christie, già celebre scrittrice, sposava in seconde nozze il giovane archeologo Max Mallowan, decisa a seguire il marito nelle sue spedizioni in Paesi come la Siria o l’Iraq. Nacque così questo libro di memorie, un resoconto di viaggi ironico e autoironico, candido e malizioso, discreto e sincero in cui l’autrice rievoca avventure e disavventure di una tranquilla signora della buona borghesia inglese. less
Recommended by Neal Ascherson, and 1 others. Neal AschersonI was surprised to see a book by Agatha Christie on your list: Come , Tell me How You Live. (Source)
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