Do you have any book suggestions for archaeology/anthropology casuals? Or just cool informative books about history? It's not my field of study but I like learning about it
BOY DO I HAVE BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
My number one book recommendation right now is The Edge of Memory. The book is about how to pin down the first ever true story, and it also deals with the oral side of history, rather than just the written side. It is a little scientific sometimes, but it’s not dense.
If you’re looking for actual archaeology/anthropology texts that you might read in a class, check out How to Lie with Maps. It’s a great insight into how historical archaeologists think, and a good mind opener.
In the same vein, Remembering to Forget is an incredibly insightful text on how photography has changed the way that the world deals in information. I think that this is one of the most insightful books on the human condition, especially in the media saturated world that we live in now. Warning: contains images of dead bodies, detailed discussion of the Holocaust.
If you’re interested in historical research and document based stuff, The Song of Simon de Montfort is a good choice. The writing itself isn’t great, but I feel like the claims made and the research presented make up for the lack of wordsmithing.
If you want something that’s more in the seat gripping, breath catching category but is also still very real, check out Shadow Divers. This is both history and archaeology, but with a real sense of danger and willingness to go into the unknown. Part of what I like about it is that these guys figure out their own research methods from scratch, which is like... very hard. Especially without the internet.
For more sort of fun facts I would nominate The Year 1000, which is full of details about ordinary life for the OG millennials. This is a good book that you can pick up and set down quickly if you don’t have a ton of time.
If you want to feel like you’re actually living and breathing in another time period, which is something that I think is vital to archaeology, nothing has ever gotten me close to The Wake. It’s written in something very close to the Old English/Anglo Saxon that was spoken in 1000 CE, so actually reading it is a little tough. I would highly recommend the audiobook version.
Historical fiction is hard because there’s so much diversity to both love and hate. That being said, Wolf Hall is critically acclaimed for a reason, and there’s the added bonus of the incredible tv miniseries that you can watch after you’ve read the first book.
Lastly, if I haven’t given you a suggestion about a particular area that you’re interested in, go to Google Scholar and type in some key words. Not enough people realize that you can use Google Scholar for stuff outside of academic work, but I go there all the time to find articles and books about specific things that I want to know more about.
