Hengeworld

The authoritative book on the world-famous neolithic monument of Stonehenge, investigating its mysterious archaeological past, and its importance in British history.

Generations have tried to understand the meaning of this amazing monument... yet till now no one has bene able to say with any confidence what it was for... an up-to-date, eye-opening book on our greatest prehistoric monument

Mike Pitts is that rare thing, an archaeologist who not only makes the news...but who can also write it. This book is a gem - witty, charming, urbane, informative

Mike Pitts, the only living archaeologist to have directed excavations at both Stonehenge and Avebury, studied at the Institue of Archaeology (University College London) before moving to Wiltshire for a stint as Curator of the Alexander Keiller Museum. He has written extensively for academic journals, as well as for radio, newspapers and popular magazines and his first book Fairweather Eden was published in 1997 to critical acclaim.

In November 1997 English Heritage announced the discovery of a vast prehistoric temple in Somerset. The extraordinary wooden rings at Stanton Drew are the most recent and biggest of a series of remarkable discoveries that have transformed the way archaeologists think of the great monuments in the region, including Avebury and Stonehenge; one of the world's most famous prehistoric monuments, top tourist site and top location for summer solstice celebrations. The results of these discoveries have not been published outside academic journals and no one has considered the wider implications of these finds. Here Mike Pitts, who has worked as an archaeologist at Avebury, and has access to the unpublished English Heritage files, asks what sort of people designed and built these extraordinary neolithic structures - the biggest in Britain until the arrival of medieval cathedrals. Using computer reconstructions he shows what they looked like and asks what they are for. This is the story of the discovery of a lost civilisation that spanned five centuries, a civilisation that now lies mostly beneath the fields of Southern England.

Michael Pitts

Mark Roberts

The discovery of the remains of 'Boxgrove Man', a 'Missing Link' hominid half a million years old in chalk pits in Sussex made world headlines in May 1994. This was the most sensational archeological find in the UK since Piltdown Man - only this time it was not a hoax. Continuing excavation by site archeologist Mark Roberts has enabled him and his team to build up a picture of this, the first Englishman, and to open up a unique window on life in Britain before the Ice Age. Because these human remains, the artefacts surrounding them and the remains of the local flora and fauna - including elephants and rhinoceroses of an extinct species - are preserved in an unprecedented way, we now discover how our ancestors hunted, ate, manufactured the implements they needed to survive and interacted; these were neither the opportunist scavengers nor the mindless killers that they have previously been supposed to be. Boxgrove, therefore, represents a revolutionary view of the origins of mankind, and changes our understanding of what it means to be human.

A Fairweather Eden

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