Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples, 8000 BC to AD 1500 - Hardcover

Cunliffe, Barry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199240191 ISBN 13: 9780199240197

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

viii + 600pp, inc. many b/w & coloured illus, laminated card, 25.5x19.5cm

About this title

Review:

"... excellently presented, with numerous colour illustrations, maps, diagrams and figures as well as a well-measured text." -- Fortean Times

"Cunliffe is, quite simply, on top of his subject, and I can recommend this for anyone interested in our origins." -- Fortean Times

"If you read no other book on the subject this is the one to go for." -- Fortean Times

"Intellectually bold and exciting book, written with great verve and enviable self-confidence." -- Jeremy Black, Literary Review

"It is a brilliant, articulate exposition of one of the most fascinating new ideas in archaeology." -- Richard Ellis, The Times,

"The book will astonish you with the extent of its scholarship" -- Publisher

"This is the book I have wanted to write for a lifetime" -- Barry Cunliffe

"a scholarly tome of enormous scope ... an enjoyable read." -- Observer

"intellectually bold and exciting book, written with great verve and enviable self-confidence." -- Jeremy Black, Literary Review

Synopsis:

In this highly illustrated book Barry Cunliffe focuses on the western rim of Europe--the Atlantic facade--an area stretching from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Isles of Shetland.We are shown how original and inventive the communities were, and how they maintained their own distinctive identities often over long spans of time. Covering the period from the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, c. 8,000 BC, to the voyages of discovery c . AD 1500, he uses this last half millennium more as a well-studied test case to help the reader better understand what went before. The beautiful illustrations show how this picturesque part of Europe has many striking physical similarities. Old hard rocks confront the ocean creating promontories and capes familiar to sailors throughout the millennia. Land's End, Finistere, Finisterra--until the end of the fifteenth century this was where the world ended in a turmoil of ocean beyond which there was nothing. To the people who lived in these remote places the sea was their means of communication and those occupying similar locations were their neighbours.

The communities frequently developed distinctive characteristics intensifying aspects of their culture the more clearly to distinguish themselves from their in-land neighbours. But there is an added level of interest here in that the sea provided a vital link with neighbouring remote-place communities encouraging a commonality of interest and allegiances. Even today the Bretons see themselves as distinct from the French but refer to the Irish, Welsh, and Galicians as their brothers and cousins. Archaeological evidence from the prehistoric period amply demonstrates the bonds which developed and intensified between these isolated communities and helped to maintain a shared but distinctive Atlantic identity.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0199240191
• ISBN 13: 9780199240197
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 608