Archaeology as a systematic scientific discipline is generally considered to have begun in the nineteenth century; however, the present volume reminds us that humankind has taken an interest in how his ancestors lived and died many centuries before the great excavations begun in the nineteenth century. Author of the work under review is Tim Murray, professor of archaeology at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia. In the introduction Murray explains that the idea for this volume arose from his work as editor of the Encyclopedia of Archaeology (Murray, 1999‐2001), which is a wide‐ranging compendium of essays by different authors tracing the development of archaeology on a global scale. In contrast Milestones examines significant archaeological discoveries throughout the world in a series of brief essays.
Murray has chosen to arrange his essays in three broad chronological sections: pre‐1800, the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. Each section starts with a lengthy essay reviewing the time period in question and offering more general comments on individual milestones of significance. Thus the discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum are to be found in the pre‐1800 section where the accidental discovery of Roman remains was made by an Italian farmer digging a well in 1709, whereas Schliemann's famous search for the historical site of King Priam's Troy in the 1870s is to be found in the section on nineteenth century milestones. At this point the weakness of such a chronological arrangement becomes evident, as Murray has decided to place the attempts to locate the palaces of Priam and his Greek allies which Sir Arthur Evans undertook in the 1890s, in the section on twentieth century archaeology. Moreover, both these sections are in turn separated from the essay on Michael Ventris' success in 1953 in deciphering the linear B tablets from Knossos, a discovery which subsequently clarified many of the mysteries in Homer's Iliad. Similarly the search by Napoleon's engineers in the early 1800s to locate the treasures of the Pharaohs in Egypt, which in turn led to the discovery of the Rosetta stone, are separated from the now legendary discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Caernarvon in 1922. Such an arrangement might be less inconvenient had the volume contained at least an outline list of the milestone essays. However, to retrieve all milestone essays on a related theme the reader must resort to a detailed study of the index.
In any volume covering such a broad subject there will inevitably be topics for which the reader will search in vain. However, the reviewer was surprised to find three pages devoted to the discovery of early human remains at Brixham Cove, Devon in 1858 whilst there was no mention of the more important discoveries of Bronze Age settlements in Spain, particularly at Los Millares and Atapuerca also in the nineteenth century. Both of these discoveries are of the utmost importance for tracing the history of early man in Europe. The reviewer was also disappointed to find no mention of the Goths and Visigoths, nor of the Moorish empire which dominated the Mediterranean basin throughout Europe's so‐called “Dark Ages” and, most important of all, ensured the preservation of classical literature and thought, thereby laying the foundation of the European Renaissance.
It is unclear at whom this volume is aimed. It is somewhat too scholarly to satisfy the general reader with an interest in archaeology. On the other hand, the chronological arrangement makes it rather unwieldy for the academic user. Despite such criticism it makes an interesting and instructional read. Given the high price of this volume its main market is likely to be public and undergraduate libraries where it can offer ready information on many strands within this subject area that in recent years has become a major study area as well as a subject of increasing popular interest. The volume makes excellent reading and deserves to be well represented in public and college libraries.
