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Ancient Europe,: From the beginnings of agriculture to classical antiquity; a survey Hardcover – January 1, 1968

by Stuart Piggott (Author)

3.6 3 ratings

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‘Ancient Europe’ is a readable and copiously illustrated account of man’s material, social, and cultural growth, from the sixth millennium B.C. until the incorporation of much of barbarian Europe within the Roman Empire. Professor Piggott brings together for the first time the scattered archeological evidence for this entire period and presents an up-to-date and comprehensive synthesis of the main lines of the European prehistory. Distinguished by authority and clarity of presentation, the book traces the beginnings of animal domestication and plan cultivation in ancient Western Asia, studies the transmission of these skills (by population movements and assimilation) to the European continent, and analyzes the agrarian and social structures they imply. The author gives expert attention to early metal winning and working, the early technology of working in copper and later in bronze, trade in raw materials and finished products, the spread of the Indo-European languages, and the way in which these developments brought social and political repercussions to civilized and barbarian peoples alike. Ranging over the whole of European field, from the Atlantic shores to the Urals and the Caucasus, the book is an excellent introductory text for courses in European prehistory, archeology, and cultural evolution, at the undergraduate or graduate level, as well as a useful reference for professional archeologists and for laymen. It is lavishly illustrated with more than 150 illustrations and more than 50 photographs of ancient European artifacts. Book Dust Jacket

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0007DY5AG
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Aldine (January 1, 1968)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 340 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.85 pounds

Best Sellers Rank: #10,336,707 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23,102 in Archaeology (Books)
- #28,623 in Travelogues & Travel Essays
- #169,620 in European History (Books)

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M. A. Seifter

European Prehistory in summary

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2022

Verified Purchase

Although not exactly state of art, this volume, tracing the archaeological prehistory of Europe, should be considered of considerable value, since it was written by Stuart Piggott, one of the more famous early-mid twentieth century British archaeologists, with his scholarship and excavations encompassing not only Britain but much of Continental Europe and India. (For an interesting background on his education and archaeological career, see his statement of scholarly autobiography in "The Pastmasters Eleven Modern Pioneers of Archaeology".) yet this was the first book about the subject that I read back in college, and its narrative still wears well, as a good, thorough beginning text of European prehistory, from the earliest agriculturalists of the Meso-Neolithic (c. 5000BP/actually from the prior Paleolithic, ca. 30,000 BP) to the socio-cultural life and then the conquest of the Celts in Britain and the Continent by Rome (1st century BCE-1st century CE). This volume included a good number of maps enunciating where what culture was located and how it spread over the Continent, and what site features looked like; as well as photos of artifacts from a wide array of prehistoric European sites and cultures. Well worth a purchase, for all of these reasons; a beginning archaeologist could do no better than start his/her career with reading this book.

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Roberto Fideli

The problem is not only the style, but the approach and the logic. However, some methodological clearness is present.

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2015

Stuart Piggott was professor of archeology at Edinburgh. He graduated in the faculty of historical and social sciences of London university. This book is not written in an elegant style, even if I appreciated the photos and the maps with the territorial distribution of artworks or words, which may be connected to the statistical method. But here the problem is not only style, but the approach and the logic.
Particularly, I am very doubtful about the pretension of anybody to work both in the humanities and in science (p. 10). An archeologist must use radiocarbon dating and other scientific techniques when he digs the ground and when her recovers buildings. He can’t assert anything ignoring science. But he is not only a collector of observational data (p. 5). He is a humanist who has the task with the help of artworks and written incisions to reconstruct the minds of men of the past with their inner world and symbolism (see my review of the British archeologists James and Service). Particularly, the Celtic artistic imagination expressed in real and fantastic zoomorphism in bronze ornaments on amphorae, bowls and statues needs this ability. I am in agreement with the classical philologist Toynbee. Instead, he asserts that Toynbee’s oeuvre doesn’t help to understand the past (p. 6). Besides, Toynbee got scientific insights about the domestication of animals which are totally forgotten here (see my review of A study of history). Here, wrongly, the domestication of the dog is connected to breeding and not to hunting (pp. 35-36). However, the natural character of animal domestication is recognized (pp. 26-27).
He assumed the existence of the Indo-Europeans (pp. 78-80) following the Kurgan theory, which places their fatherland between the Black Sea and the Caspian sea. The same name Kurgan is misplaced since it is the Turkish name for burial. And there is not any evidence of their migration to India in the Neolithic age (see my review of Rajaram). And domesticated horses were not known there in that far past, unlike what it is asserted here (p. 36), but only around 1500 BC, that is in the bronze age. Besides, against the Arian invasion theory placed in that age, Rigveda does not describe people riding horses in battle (. He uses the language of the “social sciences” (cultural and social anthropology, economics, linguistics, social psychology, etc.) assuming that the Indo-Europeans got three castes (p. 80): kings and courtesans, warriors, common men. We don’t have any evidence of this rigid division in the European past. Biologists (and particularly human ethologists) observe the natural organization considering ethnicity, gender and age. Historians of law (and economy) study the cultural organization in crafts, where intelligence, a genetic property, is likely to be rewarded. Of course, there is only one reality. And humanists can’t ignore science. However, a humanist shall keep his skills and his professionalism as scholar of art, law or literature. I left the “human and social sciences” forever, after a short working engagement with them between 1995 and 2005. It is not my task to reflect on the reform of the university. And I distinguish men from categories. Consciousness is personal and not social, unlike what Piggott asserted (p. 336). The first important physical separation is that between my Self (with my body, my mind with the memories of my experience) and the others.
Despite my polite, but strong criticism, I will give a young student of the humanities (and particularly of archeology or philology) the advise to read this book since some methodological clearness is present. He sees a cultural analogy between the zoomorphic art of ancient Europe and of ancient China (pp. 133 e 176). He shows the territorial distribution of three Celtic place name ending in briga, dunum and magus (pp. 172-174). Spain was occupied by the Celts before than Britain, according to radiocarbon dating. Some of the oldest words of their language (as the place names ending in briga) were present there and not in the British isles. This is a result in touch with paleoanthropology and radiocarbon dating of remains of huts, houses and physical products which show that Central Europe (and particularly Hallstatt in nowadays Austria) was the original fatherland of the Celts. Instead the Atlantic theory of the origin of Celts recently developed by the professor of archeology at Oxford Cunliffe lacks any evidence (see my review about an older book by him). The prefix Gal is typically Celtic; and Bonifacio (Corsica) was called Fretum Gallicum. But until now nobody found archeological evidence of their presence in Corsica and in Gallura. Instead, there is growing genetic evidence of the origin from the Semitic Middle East of the majority of the population of Sardinia, outside Gallura, and of Tuscany, outside the areas where Corsican, Emilian and Romagnolo dialects are spoken. Here among the "sea peoples" both Sardinians and Tyrrenians (that is Etruscans) are mentioned (p. 159).

Roberto Fideli
Translator and writer