Description:An invigorating journey through Britain’s rapidly evolving prehistoric
landscape, and an insight into the lives of its inhabitants, in fifteen
scenes.
In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist
Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of Britain’s prehistory, from the
Old Stone Age (about one millions years ago) to the arrival of the
Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen chronologically arranged
portraits of specific ancient British landscapes. Through his
archeological expertise, Pryor is able to bring the people of prehistory
to the fore: their beliefs, the way they lived their lives and earned
their living. Whether writing about the early human family who trod the
estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk circa 900,000 BC, the
Mesolithic inhabitants of Starr Carr in North Yorkshire who worked red
deer and elk antlers into jewellery, the Bronze Age farmers of the
fertile soils of Flag Fen, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain’s first
towns, Pryor brings the ancient past to life: revealing the daily
routines of our ancient ancestors, and how they coped with both simple
practical problems and more existential challenges.