720 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [79,1977]

Circles and Standing Stones: An Illustrated Exploration of Megalith Mysteries of Early Britain. Evan Hadingham. New York: Walker, 1975. vii + 240 pp. $12.50 (cloth).

Ronald Hicks Ball State University

This is a popular introduction to the megalithic monuments of the British Isles by a young Cambridge graduate whose earlier book on a related subject, Ancient Carvings of Britain: A Mystery (1974), showed him to be cautious, factual, and entertaining. As Hadingham makes clear in his introduction, he is well aware of the risks of oversimplifi- cation and as the text shows he is as interested in ideas about prehistory as he is in prehistory itself.

The first five chapters provide a general introduction to Neolithic and Bronze Age British archaeology and its interpretation, with discussion of megalithic tombs, the introduction of agriculture, long barrows, cursus monuments, causewayed camps, henges, settlements, structures, and burials. Later, in Chapters 9 and 10, he also looks at megalithic art and the amazing array of standing stones near Carnac in Brittany, but primary attention is focused on two specific problems.

Chapters 6 through 8 consider a topic that has provoked intense interest and con- troversy over the past decade: the interpreta- tion of Stonehenge and other such structures as prehistoric observatories. Here Hadingham concentrates on the work of Professor Alex- ander Thom, whose writings, whatever their shortcomings, have served the important function of forcing a careful reevaluation of the intellectual capabilities of the people who.inhabited the British Isles during the third and second millennia B.C.

Chapters 11 through 13 look at another controversy, that over the possible connec- tion between the megaliths and the druids. These three chapters discuss the historical evidence for the druids, late survival of pre-Christian traditions, and the 18th cen- tury revival of interest in the druids.

The text is supplemented by appendixes providing conventional radiocarbon dates (for comparison with the Seuss-calibrated dates used in the text), an extensive bibliog- raphy for further reading, and a list of the sites mentioned in the text together with National Grid references and directions for reaching them.

Errors in Circles and Standing Stones are rare and such other faults as a certain amount of oversimplification are unavoid- able in a book intended for the’general

public. Altogether, Hadingham has produced a very pleasant excursion through the archaeology of the British Isles. This is a book that wouldn’t be out of place in any university library and is well worth reading for anyone interested in an introduction to some of archaeology’s most intriguing prob- lems.

Irish Passage Graves: Neolithic Tomb. Builders in Ireland and Britain 2500 B.C. Michael Herity. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975. xiv + 308 pp. $17.50 (cloth).

Antonio Gilman California State University, Northridge

Megalithic monuments are the most visi- ble, spectacular sites of European prehistory, and among the most striking of megaliths are the passage graves of Ireland. This hand- somely illustrated, well produced, and (in these days) reasonably priced volume seeks to describe these collective tombs and place them in their culture-historical context. In successive chapters Herity treats (1) the history of research on Irish passage graves, with emphasis on the work of early an- tiquaries, (2) the construction and siting of the tombs, with emphasis on the Boyne, Loughcrew, Carrowkeel, and Carrowmore tomb groups, (3) the art carved on the megaliths used in building the tombs, (4) the remains recovered from the tombs and the burial rites which can be adduced from them, and (5) the (scanty) evidence for nonmortuary cultural practices attributable to the tombs’ builders. Having thus defined the Boyne Culture, i.e., the set of “ideals” which the passage grave builders can be determined to have possessed, the author concludes by seeking the historical deriva- tion of this cluster of mental templates. Relying in particular on the evidence of the tombs’ art and their architectural plans, he finds that passage graves were brought t o Ireland by settlers from Brittany. While the book contains a useful inventory of the 329 known Irish passage graves, this is not a formal corpus of this class of monument.

This book is an example of the traditional school of megalithic studies. Essentially, it updates and expands 6 Riordain and Daniel’s 1964 treatment of the same subject (New Grange and the Bend of the Boyne) , while maintaining the same modified diffu- sionist outlook on European prehistory. Unfortunately, a decade of research has made views acceptable ten or twenty years ago difficult to uphold today. For example, Herity ’s main, traditional conclusion is that