Important Digs
History Unearthed. By Sir Leonard Woolley. (Benn, 30s.) SIR LEONARD WOOLLEY, who has himself done so much to unearth history by digging up the past, here gives us summary illustrated accounts of eighteen archeological sites throughout the world. These accounts provide in themselves an interest- ing history of excavation, and give clear proof— if such were needed—of Woolley's ability to present in a few words and with a few well-chosen illustrations the essential technical features and historical significance of important digs. Some of the sites he describes are not as yet published in English, or, if so, only in interim reports in periodicals. Most of the selected sites demonstrate modern scientific digging, but two from pre- scientific days are included for their absorbing historical interest--these are Layard at• Nimrud, and Schliemann at Troy and Myceme. Layard confessed that he dug `to obtain the largest pos- sible number of well preserved objects of art in the least possible outlay of time and money.' Schliemann's reputation as an archeologist has varied between extremes; Woolley's judgment is a fair and just one—'granted that his technique was not that of today,' he writes, 'he was better equipped for archaeology than have been so many of his successors.'
The sixteen selected post-Schliemann sites in- clude Maiden Castle, Knossos and Sutton Hoo in Europe, the Fayum and Tutankhamun in Egypt, Karatepe, Jer'cho, Ur and Ras Shamra in the Near East, Anyang in China, Mohenjodaro and Arikarnedu in India. There are particularly valuable and sympathetic accounts of Stein's work in Central Asia and the discoveries of the frozen tombs at Pazyryk in Siberia. Through all these varied circumstances of time and place, Woolley is a clear and faithful guide. Only very occa- sionally does he mislead, as when he says of the Deccan megaliths that 'almost exactly similar tombs' are found In the Caucasus area, in Pales- tine, in Sardinia, and Spain and N.W. Europe and the British Isles,' but, admittedly, he is in dis- tinguished company in the error of conceptualis- ing one or two technical parallels into a world- wide `megalithism.'
This book, attractive and useful as it is, has several shortcomings. There is no index. Only live of the eighteen sites described have maps to tell us where they are. Some of the chapters have no mention of the dates of the excavations described, while the excavators of Sutton Hoo, praised for having done their work 'admirably,' are unmentioned But it is the illustrations that let down the author's high purpose in planning and writing this book. There are 104 pages of illustrations all reproduced by offset lithography. Some are reasonably good, none entirely satisfac- tory and many very bad. It would be difficult to find worse examples of how not to print arch:co- logical illustrations than the air photograph of Jericho (p. 100) or the photograph of the painting on silk (p. 137). This is sad because Woolley's idea is a very good one, and if only the well-selected photographs could have been more faithfully re- produced, this would he in every way a notable
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