Ancient Europe

Ancient Europe (1973) by Stuart Piggott
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press | ISBN: 0852242522 | Condition: Good (like a chipped amphora that still holds wine)
Excavated from the shelves by Crappy Old Books

Once upon a time, before Netflix documentaries with dramatic drone footage, there was Ancient Europe (1973). Stuart Piggott — eminent archaeologist, pipe-smoker, and a man who could conjure excitement from a posthole — set out to tell the story of Europe from its foggy Stone Age beginnings through to the sort of classical grandeur where everyone was wearing togas and pretending civilisation had been their idea all along.

Our copy is in Good condition. Which is to say: no catastrophic damage, no catastrophic doodles, but the kind of gentle wear that suggests it has been lugged around in a rucksack to at least one underheated university seminar. Consider it a scholarly relic in itself: text intact, spine unbroken, and only the faintest whiff of library carpet glue (though not, mercifully, an ex-library copy this time).

Inside you’ll find Neolithic farmers, Bronze Age hoarders, Celtic tribes, and Romans with a worrying fondness for straight roads. Piggott’s prose marches steadily through the millennia, scattering potsherds of wit and dollops of academic certainty in equal measure. It is not the Indiana Jones school of archaeology — more the trowel-and-sensible-jumper school — but it gets the job done.

Why you might want this book:

• Because you’d like to understand “Ancient Europe” as more than a badly drawn map in a school textbook.

• Because you enjoy footnotes with the same intensity other people enjoy cocktails.

• Because you know deep down that calling the Iron Age “ancient” is both wrong and gloriously pedantic.

• Because buying it makes you look like the kind of person who pronounces “archaeology” with a reverent pause before the second syllable.

So here it stands: Ancient Europe — still Good after fifty years, like a ruin that hasn’t entirely fallen over. Available now from Crappy Old Books, where even the past is sold with a wink.

Keep browsing: See more History books Other books by Stuart Piggott