- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Fourth Estate; New edition edition (1 Sep 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1857026993
- ISBN-13: 978-1857026993
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,182,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
‘Perceptive, radical and elegantly written. His quest for answers takes us on an extraordinary journey, like time travellers in the boneyards of history…All this is achieved with the style of a consummate storyteller.’ Bel Mooney, The Times
‘Like a thriller-writer he deploys cliff-hanging chapter endings. Like a good novelist he is unafraid of human emotion. As an archaeologist he knows how to sort and wash bones. As a thinker he restores dignity to these unnamed bodies by holding them compassionately with his words.’ Michele Roberts, Independent on Sunday
‘Sit back and revel in this riveting exploration of our collective ancestral psyche.’ Sunday Herald
‘Illuminating.’ Scotsman
"I never would have thought that archaeology would be so interesting, so relevant to how we think today … and so disturbing. In "The Buried Soul", Timothy Taylor tells a provocative and often grisly tale. This is a fascinating book, grippingly written, of considerable scope and ambition."
Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology, Yale University
No archaeoogist who reads this book will ever be able to contemplate human remains with the same innocence as before, nor can any reader regard fellow humans with as much optimism. Taylor calls into question the adequacy of both the
ecological rationalism and the cultural relativism that for decades have been the interpretational mainstays of archaeology…Taylor makes a major contribution to building a more comprehensive understanding of human beings.
Bruce Trigger, Professor of Anthropology, McGill University
Bel Mooney, The Times
His quest for answers takes us on an extraordinary journey, like time travellers in the boneyards of history.
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First Sentence
It was a long shot, and the arrow found its mark just as the man was turning to flee into the mountains. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
It was a long shot, and the arrow found its mark just as the man was turning to flee into the mountains. Read the first page
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Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is very refreshing. It's a very scholarly account incorporating a huge variety of evidence about the theory and practice of death from both pre-historical and historical times. What the book doesn't do though, and this is the refreshing bit, is take on face value the kind of easy moral relativism that allows us to deal, apparently non-judgementally, with suggestions of abusive or otherwise unsavoury behaviour in past cultures. This is pretty challenging to those (like me) who have approached archaeological evidence with a sense of interest and wonder, but have maybe shied away from really engaging with the unpleasantness of some of the evidence. But I think the debate really benefits from this kind of unflinching analysis.
His arguments about the developing meaning of death in the very early days of humankind are interesting and, for the most part, convincing. Since he's got a great sense of dramatic tension (rare in writers of decent archaeological books - or at least the ones I've read) it's pretty unputdownable too, without ever straying into the kind of nonsense populist archaeological thinking that he clearly has little time for.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I am an archaeologist, educated to postgraduate level and I have had to plough my way through books as dry as dust to find some nugget of information. Of course, the way you use these books is to look up what you need in the index, go to that page, use what you require and ignore the rest. I picked up Tim Taylor's book, started it at page one and read it through to the end. Hand on heart I can honestly say it is the only archaeology book that I have read from cover to cover. But it's SO much more than about archaeology. Tim covers his own personal reaction to a death in the family in a searingly honest fashion and in trying to make sense of it, takes us on a journey of the relationship between humans and death. Highly recommended.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Well researched and convincingly argued, Taylor presents an interesting hypotheis on attitudes to death,fertility and afterlife from prehistory through to the present.
Superbly written with the pace of a good novel and challenging throughout, I could not put the book down! It is the first archaeology related book that I have read from cover to cover (and no doubt will re-visit)since Mike Pitts 'Hengeworld' a decade ago.
I thoroughly recommend this publication to anyone interested in archaeology, anthropology or comparative religion although it is accessable to any curious individual.
Superbly written with the pace of a good novel and challenging throughout, I could not put the book down! It is the first archaeology related book that I have read from cover to cover (and no doubt will re-visit)since Mike Pitts 'Hengeworld' a decade ago.
I thoroughly recommend this publication to anyone interested in archaeology, anthropology or comparative religion although it is accessable to any curious individual.
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