Abstract
THIS, the seventh edition, “entirely reset,” was revised by Lord Avebury only a few months before his lamented death. The author was a pioneer in the popularisation of the study of archæology. It is pleasant to be reminded: “This (the Drift period) I have proposed to call the lsquo;Palæolithic’ Period,” and “for this (the Stone Age) period I have suggested the term ‘Neolithic.’” The present edition is specially enriched with coloured illustrations of Palæolithic paintings. For the wide range of its information, and the fairness with which divergent views are discussed, the book well deserves the improved lease of life now given to it as a popular text-book of archæology. Its defects are those of its class. For certain reasons, one had been led to expect that in this edition the author would have set a fashion in works of the kind in including a summary of the astronomical evidence which is but rarely detached from archæological objects. The Stonehenge evidence, it is true, is now too well impressed on the popular mind to be overlooked (pp. 133-4), but it is severely isolated. It is in the onterests of young readers or teachers of this text-book that one points to the latter half of the following passage as a questionable statement. “In this country we still habitually call the megalithic monuments ‘Druidical,’ but it is hardly necessary to mention that there;s really no sufficient reason for connecting them with Druidical worship” (p. 126).
Prehistoric Times: as Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages.
By the late Rt. Hon. Lord Avebury. Seventh edition, thoroughly revised and entirely reset. Pp. iii + 623. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1913.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
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GRIFFITH, J. Prehistoric Times: as Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages . Nature 93, 57 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093057b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093057b0