The Experience of Ancient Egypt provides a comprehensive portrait of what we know about ancient Egypt today, examining in detail issues of religion, of beliefs and practices surrounding death, of everyday life and of literature.
In an engaging style, the author traces Egyptology from its classical roots, through the painstaking process of deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the most up-to-date bio-medical and archaeological techniques, never forgetting how time has proved that it is impossible to deliver the absolute truth about ancient...

Archaeologists do not discover the past but take the fragmentary remains which they recover and make something of them. Archaeology is a process of detection and supposition; this is what makes it so fascinating. However, the interpretations of archaeologists differ and change over time. They depend upon the amount of evidence available, the ideas and preconceptions of the archaeologist and their interests and aims.
Michael Shanks's enlivening work is a guide to the discipline of classical archaeology and its objects. It assesses archaeology as a means of reconstructing ancient Greek...

The transition from foraging, farming and the neolithic village to the city-state is a complex and fascinating period. Studies on the prehistory of the Near East by nineteenth and twentieth century pioneers in the field transformed archaeology through the creation of the 'Ages System' of Stone, Bronze and Iron. The Near East provides a developmental account of this period contextualised by discussion of the emergence of archaeology as a discipline.
The Near East details the causes and effects - enviromental, organizational, demographic and technological - of the world's...