Archaeology is Rubbish
By Tony Robinson & Mick Aston

     Archaeology ……rubbish? Surely not; archaeology is all about wresting priceless treasures from haunted tombs and dodging the odd mummy or mad scientist? Well not usually unless you are making a Hollywood film but when you think about it rationally it is all about rubbish. Other people’s thrown away items throughout the millennia are now gracing museums everywhere and teaching us a lot about the way people lived in the past. This delightful and lavishly illustrated primer shows how the reader can also be an amateur archaeologist in their own back yard with the aid of the Time Team from the top Channel 4 show.

     If you are wondering why on earth the professionals are encouraging ordinary people to do what the antiquarians of the past used to do and do wrong then consider this. The professionals aren’t usually invited to dig on private property unless there have already been finds and even these days archaeology sadly takes a back seat when the developers are itching to get some building project underway. But this book will show you in Mick’s entertaining style how to go about it properly. Learn the different words for a hole, make you own context sheets and discover the painstaking way to correctly excavate your garden. If this doesn’t sound very exciting then this book is obviously not for you but, if like this reviewer, you are a fan of this show and are just itching to get out there and dig, then read on. Mick takes the reader through a fantasy dig that starts in an ordinary back yard and takes in all sorts of other people as the finds turn out to be rather special. Thus the reader can discover how to do it by the book and discover too about the different jobs in archaeology and how it all fits together as well as the fact that it will seldom run smoothly due to lack of funds, thieves and plain old incompetence. It is a highly readable book and even goes on to ponder hilariously about excavations a millennium in the future when aliens are trying to learn about Earth’s past and wondering if the supermarket in the fictitious town was a racecourse for some bizarre rite.

      This is very highly recommended to anybody interested in this subject. I haven’t seen anything similar on the market and it would have to be pretty impressive to be better than this.