Fossils: The Key to the Past, Richard Fortey

This is probably more of a reference book than one to read straight through; it’s beautifully illustrated with sketches and photographs reproducing common and interesting fossils, and it has advice on how to identify fossils, clean them up and store them, along with the relatively straightforward explanations of how fossils form, how they can be useful, and specific titbits on various different individual fossils.

The information wasn’t new to me, and it isn’t Fortey’s finest writing, though he can always make geology sound fascinating. It’s a beautiful book, though, and one I’ll definitely keep for reference.

Rating: 4/5

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The Power of Babel, John McWhorter

It’s been a little too long since I read this to write a detailed review, but on the whole I found it readable and interesting. At times it began to feel belaboured in terms of the examples given and the detail gone into, though of course, I’ve also read various other books about linguistics and so I had some grounding in what I was reading already. For the most part, McWhorter avoids being prescriptive about language and tracks change in language as how language works — which you’d expect, or hope for at least, in a linguist, but it isn’t always the case.

There’s some interesting stuff particularly on creoles and pidgins, which somewhat debunks the idea that a pidgin becomes a creole through children speaking it, etc. Not that there’s no truth to it, but McWhorter complicates the picture a little.

Rating: 3/5

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The Sutton Hoo Story, Martin Carver

If you’re interested in the Sutton Hoo burials and the history of the whole site, including a detailed examination of how the sites were excavated and when, this is definitely a good resource. If you’re more interested in the more spectacular finds at Sutton Hoo, i.e. the contents of Mound 1, then that isn’t the focus here and although there are lots of helpful illustrations and a fair number of colour pictures, it’s not all about treasure.

For me, as with a lot of archaeology books, I find myself wondering about some of the author’s assertions. For example, that over a century people would ‘undoubtedly’ remember who was buried in a particular place. I find myself pretty doubtful about that, especially in earlier times when generations were rather shorter than they are now.

Overall, though, there’s some interesting information and speculation here, and I’d say it’s worth reading.

Rating: 4/5

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The Earth After Us, Jan Zalasiewicz

This starts off as being just an explanation of how geology works — deposition over time, the way rocks are transformed and eroded, etc, etc. The last couple of chapters start getting into the stuff I’m really interested in: how material remains of humans might weather and last, to be found for potential future alien archaeologists. I didn’t really love Zalasiewicz’s attempts at sci-fi, with his commentary on these alien archaeologists/anthropologists and what they might think. Like most people, he sticks too close to the way humans think, and doesn’t try and figure out what the alien equivalent of “it must be for ritual purposes” might be.

(For instance, imagine a society entirely driven by scientific experiment. Instead of interpreting everything as ritual, they’d assume it was an attempt to find out what would happen if you did x and y! And then they’d try it for themselves! Doesn’t that sound interesting as an idea?)

Mostly pretty standard stuff, but the last couple of chapters were worth it.

Rating: 3/5

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The Statues That Walked, Terry Hunt, Carl Lipo

I didn’t actually know much about Rapa Nui before I read this book, apart from knowing of the existence of the moai and a vague idea that their civilisation committed “ecocide”, stripping their island of too many resources for it to recover and impoverishing their local environment for good. Hunt and Lipo strongly suggest otherwise, talking about the evidence of clever farming techniques designed to get the best out of the soil, and discussing the actual culprit for the devastation (invasive species brought by boat). I didn’t know about lithic mulching before, for instance, a method of covering soil with broken-up rock in order to allow the elements to leach minerals out of it and into the soil.

Hunt and Lipo discuss the moai as well, of course, discussing their purpose and how they were moved into place, but as part of the bigger context of the society on Rapa Nui and the challenges they had to deal with. I found it an enjoyable and evidence-based approach to a topic I didn’t know much about before — bravo.

Rating: 4/5

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