mark edmonds says in the unusual post script that he wanted the book to be experimental. well it is all that but not really an original format. this type of parralell narrative was first used by anthropology writers(ruth tringham was one of the first). edmonds uses the characters in his narrative to explain the chapters of his work. however the storyline in the narrative passages is weak, the characters seam to have 20th century values, and the whole book suffers because of this. there is a warm and fuzzy feel to the whole storyline, you must ask if these characters are supposed to be living in the neolithic, why are they so nice? they do nothing to argue with each other, there are no power polotics no inter group struggles for land or cattle.the illustrations in the book are awful, there are elementry errors in most of them,north arrows missing from maps and plans for instance. there are some good drawings of neolithic pots but they are not real pots but just made up ones.the use of photo montage instead of factual photography detracts from a very interesting subject.the photograph on the front cover is of gray hill in wiltshire however it has been printed back to front, this is an unforgettable mistake on the cover of a forgettable book. edmonds also does the book no favours by leaving out the in text references, without these as a student you cannot quote from the book! i could not recomend this book to an impressionable archaeology student, it is a good read though, very much like jim crace's gift of stones...