Volume 6, Number 2 · February 17, 1966
Must We Dig?
By M.I. Finley
Introduction to Archaeology
by Shirley Gorenstein
Basic Books, 165 pp., $4.50
They Found the Buried Cities
by Robert Wauchope
University of Chicago, 382 pp., $7.50
Testaments of Time
by Leo Deuel
Knopf, 590 pp., $8.95
New Roads to Yesterday
edited by Joseph R. Caldwell
Basic Books, 576 pp., $12.50
Marine Archaeology
edited by Joan du Plat Taylor
Crowell, 208 pp., $9.50
Most Ancient Egypt
by William C. Hayes, edited by Keith C. Seele
University of Chicago, 160 pp., $5.00
What, one wonders, would a browser in a bookshop expect to find when he picks up a book called Introduction to Archaeology? Probably just what Dr. Gorenstein tries to provide, a simple instruction-book on excavation—finding a site, digging, keeping records, analyzing the data. To most laymen an archaeologist is a more or less romantic, slightly eccentric, and very dedicated character, wearing a pith helmet (at least in cartoons), who digs for old bones, lost treasures, and documents. And in the 'heroic age' of archaeology that image wasn't far off: one need name only Layard at Nineveh or Heinrich Schliemann, men of the same stamp as the great explorers, Sir Richard Burton or Dr. Livingstone. They broke every known rule of present-day 'scientific' archaeology and they made the most sensational discoveries. They also knew how to report in an exciting manner, writing best sellers describing to an eager public how they exhumed dead and forgotten civilizations and filled European museums with great treasures.
Review, 3104 words
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