The Intimate Bond, Brian Fagan

This isn’t a bad book in terms of examining the relationship between humans and animals, and their impact on us… as long as you’re talking about the positive impact. The impact on health of close contact with animals leading to zoonotic illnesses is skipped entirely, though, and domestication/farming is generally painted as an unambiguously good thing. Not that Fagan is wrong in saying that animals have impacted us for the better in many ways, but it felt one-sided — especially given that there are various animal diseases that have become endemic in humans which we’d be rather better off without, and which probably wouldn’t have adapted so well to humans if we hadn’t given them such excellent opportunities.

Still, it’s an interesting book and Fagan works with archaeological and genetic evidence to give as complete a picture as he can.

Rating: 3/5

Three Stones Make A Wall, Eric H. Cline

Three Stones Make a Wall is an overview of a lot of different archaeological sites and how archaeology is actually done there, and how it has been done in the past. It only glancingly deals with sites about which whole books can or should be written, but it does so by highlighting everything that’s so fascinating about them, and it definitely whetted my appetite for more. It’s easy to read and not technical at all, and if you have read specialist books on any of the digs mentioned — Schliemann’s dig at Troy, for instance — then it won’t be new to you, but Cline’s enthusiasm makes it worth reading anyway.

His choice of sites is reasonably diverse, too, including Greek and Roman sites, Native American sites, Biblical sites and more. Honestly, if you’re looking for a general book to give you a survey of archaeology, or give you some ideas for sites you want to learn more about, I recommend this whole-heartedly. It’s the pop-archaeology book I was longing for, after a childhood raised on Channel 4’s Time Team. It includes a list of sources, so you can look things up for yourself, and contextualises each dig and discovery beautifully. In retrospect, I’m giving it five stars for being exactly what I wanted at exactly the right moment.

If you’re looking for something substantial, it probably won’t be for you, but if you’re grasshopper minded like me and enjoy the idea of getting a tour of half the globe in archaeology, it’s great.

Rating: 5/5

Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of The Insect That Shaped the American Frontier, Jeffrey A. Lockwood

Well, that title is a heck of a mouthful. I picked this as the next target for operation “be less scared of bugs by learning about them”, since locusts are not likely to be a problem where I am, but they’re just freaky enough (particularly in some of the accounts of locusts blotting out the sky) to make me a little bit uncomfortable. Less safe than bees, but further away.

In any case, Locust is a mostly interesting discussion of locusts and their impact on the North American frontier. People starved thanks to locusts, and the damage they caused is almost beyond imagining now — because they disappeared. The book follows the people who tried to predict locust movements, who tried to fight them, and who tried to find them again after their disappearance to solve the mystery of why. It gets a little long-winded at times, particularly where it goes into biographical details about people I frankly can’t be bothered to retain information about (important as I’m sure they were in their own lives), but there is a lot of interesting information as well.

Rating: 3/5