Book Reviews 65

brooding forces that lurk behind most of Ackroyd's

pagesThe dig is of more than passing interest to astronomer
Damian Fall, because Pilgrin Valley is stone country.
Here, prehistoric astronomers calculated the orbits of
the very stars studied by today's Druids, stars such as
Aldebaran, which sounds suspiciously like 'the old barren one'. Ironically, Mark Clare's wife despairs of being
able to bear or even to adopt a child. Her fate mirrors
that of the astronomer's star and indeed, of the silent
character who plies the threads together.
First Light is full of mystery which is undone rather than
solved. The archaeologist, in attempting to go back in
time, immerses him self forever in his subject and
makes changes which can never be undone. Questions
are raised about whether the COS^ is to0 great. While We
would usually argue that the knowledge justifies the
destruction, Mark Clare lacks confidence that history will
judge him favourably. These strains create an interesting climax, which defies description to anyone who has
not followed the separate trails.
Motherland is an extraordinay first novel by Timothy
O'Grady. Although the author begins by seeking his
disappeared mother, the main character is the Irish land
and his Celtic ancestry: and if that sounds like it should
be two characters, this is not a distinction which O'Grady
finds useful. Australian archaeologists who enjoy reading Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines will understand this
view.
In many respects, Motherland may appeal more to
geneticists than to archaeologists, but the key to the
journey and the search are found in the eventual discovery of the Synnott family's ancestral home. More particularly, as the latest Synnott searches for his mother, he
conducts a frantic excavation while under fire from
troops and helicopters. And it is the means of his escape
from this predicament which gives the book its wonderful
metaphorical title.

In both of these novels, there is a skilful evocation of the

adventure of burrowing deeper. Both raise ethical questions which will be appreciated by those who dig and
who have pondered the ethics of their tasks. And while
neither intends a critical examination of archaeology
per se, they do place the science into very challenging
perspective.
Archaeologists may not find First Light or Motherland to
be the kind of harmless diversions that Indiana Jones
might provide. They should, however, be delighted to
discover such powerful notions about their science
expressed in compelling fiction.

NOMADS IN ARCHAEOLOGY by Roger cribb. CambridgeUniversityPress: Cambridge (199,). ~SBN

0 521
32881 (hardback).price $65.00

Reviewed by Ran Lampert

'Cloon*,25 Narellan ~
~

~ Vale,
d NSW
, 2577

Hunter-gatherers are not nomads? Nomads live in stone

tents? Though always willing to learn something new I
did find these two pieces of information surprising. But
it is all a matter of how terms are defined of course, the
author having chosen a definition for nomadism that
excludes all except those pastoral nomads whose habitat extends from Turkey to central Asia. Actually there is
some etymological support for this narrow definition, the
word 'nomad' having been derived from a Greek word
meaning 'pasture' (OED), though modern usage is
usually more general.

Again, there is a fascination with time involved in this

tale, because the Synnott line has always contained
clairvoyants and visionaries. Accounts of medieval battle, sorcery and sexual imperative produce an intriguing
and often moving glimpse of a compressed past perhaps a kind of near-death experience.

The pastoral nomads who are the main subject of this

book inhabit a mountain region that covers much of
modern Turkey and Iran. In their choice of camp sites
they often favour proximity to the ruins of caravanserai
and such ancient monumental cities as Petra, where
they recycledthe blocks of building stone for use as low
walls around their tents. In a few &ses these stone walls
extend upwards to the full height of the structure,the tent
portion being reduced merely to a flattish roof consisting
of a sheet of fabric or plastic on stick rafters supported
by the stone walls. Being typologically continuous with
real tents such dwellings are still classified as tents even
though the main building material is stone.

But whether or not the reader associates so closely with

the narrator, the questions posed in the book are unavoidable. How much of the past do we imagine, and
how far is our knowledge restricted by the narrowness
of our imaginations? To what extent do we assume
modernity when making our estimations? Is it a circular
illogicality to attempt to understand the present by projecting forward from the past?

In its aims the study is in the main ethno-archaeological,

seeking, in the present day configurations of camp site
and living space, underlying patterns that an archaeological investigation might also be able to decode.
Much of the book is thus a detailed record of such
material evidence as the alignment and grouping of
tents, and how the spatial patteming is influenced by
kinship, socioeconomic status, hereditary rank and the

66 Book Reviews

proximity and size of associated pastures; it catalogues

also a wide range of portable domestic utensils; it plots
the patteming of domestic activities within dwellings;
and recordsthe architecture of the dwellings themselves
and notes how they vary seasonally. All potentially
useful for an archaeologist, but what about that particularly valuable kind of observation, the way in which
objects are discarded -and perhaps relocated later by
site maintenanceactivities? Here ethnographic information is lacking. Although plans of settlements show
middens and ash heaps, and there are photographs of
discarded pot sherds, these observations are entirely
archaeological.
An example of this approach may be seen in the treatment of Ali's Camp, a temporarily abandoned single
dwelling and its surrounds chosen for detailed investigation. A year previously the author had seen this site
occupied by Ali and his family who had since moved to
a new location. Some 'on-site activities' and the general
pattern of spatial organisation had been observed during
occupation of the site. However, the detailed patterning
of site usage is adduced entirely by archaeological
methods, specifically the plotting and spatial analysis of
various classes of discarded object at the abandoned
site. Emerging from this analysis is a spatial pattern
consisting of a series of concentric arcs around an
external hearth, each arc containing different types of
discarded material to suggest specialised activity zones.
It seems to me that the author lost a golden opportunity
in failing to check the validity of his archaeological
interpretationswit h some of 'ethnographic archaeology'
(using lain Davidson's definition), that is testing them
against the memory of informants. After all, why bother
to investigate archaeological patterning at a site seen in
occupation only a year previously unless to elucidate an
ethnoarchaeological methodology? A possible reason
for this perceived lapse emerges later in the book: in
commenting on the Nemrut Dag site the author notes
that although ethnographic archaeology is the usual
practice it was not used by him because of difficulties in
locating and interviewing those who had used the site
recently and, even if t his had been possible, 'the memory
of the occupation ... would most likely have been hazy'.
This is a weak excuse for not having tried. In my experience people who are taken back to a site and shown
the physical evidence usually have a prodigious memory
of events, a view supported by a number of other successful studies of this kind.
The main failing of this study generally is that it tends to
be ethnography plus archaeology, each done well in its
own right, but leaving some of the potentially more
rewarding linkages between the two unexplored. This
leaves the archaeological investigation of recently occupied sites rather without purpose apart from showing
that material evidence for the habitation of pastoral
nomads does survive, at least for a few seasons, and
can have a patterned distribution. In a project claimed

as being ethnoarchaeological this disassociation between the two kinds of evidence seems surprising but
can be traced back to definitions given in the opening
chapter. Under the heading 'Ethnoarchaeology' the
author is more concerned to damn the overuse of ethnographic analogy and laud the advantages of middle
range theory (also loosely defined and not used to any
discernible advantage in this book) than to display his
ideas on what ethnoarchaeology is and how it might be
used with regard to pastoral nomads. I suspect that he
would find Meehan and Jones' excellent book, Archaedogy with Ethnography: an Australian Perspective, Department of Prehistory, RSPacS, Australian National
University: Canberra, 1988, salutary reading.
The strength of the book lies in its extensive catalogue
of ethnographic observations slanted at future archaeological studies - or at least one presumes that the
observations will be useful for this purpose even though

THE DOMESTICATION OF EUROPE, by lan Hodder.

Basil Blackwell: Oxford and Cambridge, MA (1990). ix +
331 pp., 61 figures, 2 tables. ISBN 0 631 17769 8
(paperback). Price $49.95.
Reviewed by Paul Rainbird
Department of Prehistory and Historical Archaeology,
University of Sydney, NSW 2006

This is one of Blackwell's excellent series of social

archaeology texts and perhaps the most exciting and
controversial to date.
Hodder begins by taking a basic structural stance in an
attempt to identtfy underlying oppositions in the early
Neolithic of the Near East and of south east Europe. The
main focus is on Europe and we are told that a volume
dealing exclusively with the Near East can be expected
in the future.
His starting point, although Hodder denies having one
(p.l), is the symbolism associated with the well known
sites of Lepenski Vir, Catal Huyak and Hacilar. But this
volume is much more than a simple structural analysis
of these data. An initial identification of binary oppositions leads on to a post-structural discussion of the
Neolithic in not only south east Europe, but also central,
north and west Europe.
In the first four chapters Hodder identifies and explains
the primary opposition of domus-agrios (that is, house,
nurturing, female, culture,etc versus outside, wild, male,
etc), as identified in the archaeological record of south
east Europe.