Prehistory for kids

[Pages:4]710

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UCLA-2538B,K and P, which are not associated with cultural material, yet all belong into the roughly 1000 BC range. Do they indicate a first occupation, or did some of the earliest charcoal find its way during reconstruction periods into later excavation levels? The collagen-based bone dates support an occupation about 800 years ago, the AD 650 level, and hint at an even earlier human presence. Nevertheless, the bone dates show an extended human presence at Machu Picchu, and not a single late occupation at Inca times only, as had been supposed.

In summary, these radiocarbon dates imply a complex history for Machu Picchu and demonstrate that it reaches back in time much farther than has been known u p to now. A more

detailed architectural-historical and cultural analysis is being published by Chohfi (1988) and more investigations are planned by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura, the caretaker of Machu Picchu National Park.

Acknowledgements. We are very grateful to Arq. juan Luis Birimisa Aza for official permissions and Dr Jean Colvin, Director of llniversity of California Research Expedition Program, for support. Moreover we thank Dr G. Stickel,ERA, Los Angeles and the participants in the expedition for their cooperation and hard work. Varig Brazilian Airlines provided helpful assistance. Dr R. Burger, Yale University, kindly permitted us to use the Bingham Collection bone material. We thank David McJunkin aiid Millie Bendat for preparing the radiocarbon dating samples aiid Patricia King for preparing the manuscript.

References BERGERR, . 1983. Direct bone dating in a small CO,

counter, Radiocarbon 25: 655-9. BERGERR,. & J. ERICSON1.983. UCLA radiocarbon dates

X, Radiocarbon 25: 129-36. BINGHAMB,. 1930. Machu Picchu - a citadel of the

Incas. New Haven: Yale University Press. CHOHFIR, . 1980. What civilization knew, Solar Age

Magazine 5 (1):64-6. 1987. Identification of passive solar design principles

at Machu Picchu, Peru, in D.A. Andrejko & J. Hayes (ed.1, 12th Passive Solar Conference Proceedings,

Portland, Oregon: 506-10.

1988. Machu Picchu. MA thesis, UCLA. EATON,G.F. 1916. The collection of osteological mater-

ial from Machu Picchu. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Memoirs 5. LUMBRERASL,. 1969. De 10s pueblos, las culturas y las artes del antiguo Peru. Lima: F. Mocloa. STIJIVEMR,. 1982. A high-precision calibration of the AD

radiocarbon time scale, Radiocarbon 24: 1-26. St!ESS, H.E. 1979. A calibration table for conventional

radiocarbon dates, in R. Berger & H.E. Suess (ed.), Radiocarbon dating: 777-84. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press. (Table 1.)

Prehistory for kids

NICKMERRIMAN*

A salutary test of the advances m a d e in the communication of archaeology to a non-specialist audience is to go into a children's bookshop and ask for books about prehistory. It can be a n unsettling experience. This note looks at what was produced on a visit to a children's bookshop in Cambridge, a s it indicates the sort of haphazard collection available to a casual

buyer.

Derek Sampson. Grump goes galumphing. 94 pages, figures. 1986. London: Methuen; ISBN Magnet paperbackedition 0-416-07202 x 1.50. John Grant. Littlenoseand Two-Eyes.96 pages, figures. 1985. London: BBC Publications; ISBN

Knight paperback edition 0-340-38728-91.50. Giovanni Caselli. The everyday life of a Stone Age trader.28 pages, colour illustrations. 1986. London: Macdonald; ISBN 0-356-13053-3hardback E4.95.

* The Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN.

ANTIQUITY 62 (1988): 710-13

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Teresa Woodbridge & Jane Glue. Sheldra: a child in Neolithic Orkney. 24 pages, colour illustrations. 1988.Oxford: Tempvs Aeparatvm Archaeological and Historical Associates; ISBN 1-871-31400-3 paperback 4.50.

When you ask for children's books on prehistory, you will almost certainly first be directed to books on dinosaurs. This is evidently what the sales staff see as prehistory, and presumably many customers are sent home with the same idea. It seems it is not sufficient just to-write books on prehistory: publishers, distributors and sales assistants must also be made aware of what the subject consists of. In this case, however, further prompting produced four books that had a prehistoric content with some human (or hominine) presence.

The four books fall clearly into two completely different categories. The first two are of the `Cheap and Cheerful' school,aimed at a relatively young age-group, and do not try very hard to give a n accurate impression of life in the past. The other two are aimed at a slightly older readership and can be called `Worthy and Educational'. These have used archaeologists as advisers to the editors, and the books represent a clear attempt to put flesh on the bones of the archaeological evidence of prehistoric societies.

Littlenose and Two-Eyes by John Grant is one in a series of books which have been extremely popular with `Jackanory' viewers since 1968. Littlenose is a Neanderthal boy who, with the unwanted help of his pet, Two-Eyes (`bought in a mammoth sale') gets involved in various escapades, most of which comprise some sort of quest, be it hunting an animal or finding something important. In the first story, for example, he has to find a bear-doll through a number of clues in a poem to pass the final test to proceed from Apprentice to Junior Hunter. Other stories include a search for a missing amber pendant, and a `journey to the end of the world' while hunting an elk. At the end of the book is a chronological chart showing how long ago the Neanderthals lived, and the reader is asked whether life is much different today.

Grump goes galumphing by Derek Sampson looks like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Littlenose because it too features a boy (or small man) and his mammoth friend, Herman. As the names and title suggest, this is much

cruder than Littlenose, and the action seems to be inspired by cartoons. Grump, `theStone Age superbrain' is always inventing things and getting into trouble. In the course of the book he manages to invent a new type of fishing net, the world's first pea-shooter, a violin and skis. Not surprisingly he is unpopular with everyone else and in the last story he goes `galumphing' by sailing away to a different country.

Although the Littlenose stories do attempt to convey some details of life in the Ice Age in authentic terms, by including descriptions of firemaking, fur beds and hunting trips, in neither story does this take up a major part of the narrative, and anachronisms are rife. In Littlenose's time, for example, people can apparently make pots and write, but do not wear any clothes, and all of Grump's vocabulary is that of the modern child: `Stop whiffling round me like a mad vacuum cleaner!' he tells the hapless Herman. However, it was probably never their intention to be very accurate. The point of the stories is no more to give an insight into Palaeolithic society than the Just William stories are aimed at capturing suburban life in the 1920s. Rather, prehistoric times are a backdrop against which various adventures can be played out. Prehistory is evidently seen as a time so far removed from the present that anything goes: adventure and exploration are part of everyday life, and although things such as sabre-toothed tigers are a threat, nobody gets hurt in the end. Its purpose is to serve as a contrast with the familiar modern world of the reader.

However, it is important to stress that the books are actually rather enjoyable and, in the case of the Littlenose book, quite well-written. They are really collections of humorous stories written round a vague prehistoric background, and it is possible to argue that the above criticisms are invalid because they assess the books on inappropriate terms.

What is worrying, though, is that the stories almost certainly help to form children's images of prehistory at an early age. It is significant that these two books are set in the Palaeolithic, and, although they do not reproduce the Victorian image of the unintelligent `cave-man', they do leave the same impression as The Flintstones, in which prehistory is trivialized as some sort of knockabout non-time. This, together with the popular conception that dinosaurs constitute

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the stuff of prehistory, helps to propagate the myth that prehistory entirely consists of some remote period that never changes, something irrelevant and not to be taken seriously.

At a deeper level they can also be criticized, as much children's literature can, as acting to reinforce contemporary ideology. Women, for example, do not appear in the stories except as domestic cleaners and food providers. All of the action is centred on the male hero and his male pet, doing `man's work' such as hunting and questing. As Burtt notes (1987: 71): `children's archaeology books are more rightly stories set in the past, but based on ideas about the present', and this haphazard selection unfortunately seems no exception.

The other two books seem to have been deliberately written to counter all of the above criticisms. They are scrupulously correct in their archaeological detail, carefully illustrated, their chief protagonists are both female, and they attempt to show a range of human activities beyond just hunting and questing. They are also far more expensive.

A Stone Age trader by Giovanni Caselli is the story of a year in the life of Little Fox and her brother Painted Hand who live in the town of Catal Huyiik about 8OOCI years ago. Several themes are covered, each treated to a double page spread with the text written around a large specially-commissioned reconstruction painting by Giuliano Fornari. The indissoluble link between religion and daily life is strongly stressed in spreads on, for example, `Bringing Home the Dead':

Little Fox helped Mother prepare a special place for Grandmother's spirit to live. They dug up some earth from the floor of the platform where they all slept,and carefully placed Grandmother's necklace, her shiny mirror of polished black stone and her basket of face paints in the hollow beneath it.

The book succeeds in trying to bring a certain period to life using primarily archaeological evidence. At the end, it illustrates some of this evidence, and suggests further reading and places to visit. On academic grounds it can hardly be faulted and would doubtless win the approval of most archaeologists.

The same can be said for Sheldra: a child in Neolithic Orkney by Teresa Wooldridge. Again, much is made of the theme of ritual. Everyone

from Sheldra's island travels to the Great Stone Circle (Ring of Brodgar) for the Ceremony when all of the tribe meet. As she is too young to go, Sheldra has to stay at home with an old woman, Skart, which provides a convenient device whereby Sheldra can be told what goes on at the stone circle ceremony, and to be instructed in pottery-making, cooking, bead manufacture, and making offerings to the Eagles in honour of the Ancestors, all of which is illustrated in rather watery pictures by Jane Glue.

In contrast to the first two, in these books prehistory is not simply a semi-fantastic backdrop to adventure, but provides the interest in itself. The keynote of the books is authenticity; indeed the Sheldra book asserts boldly `this book is not an exercise in imagination - both story and pictures have been carefully based on archaeological fact' [the Stone Age trader book is honest enough to note that there are still many unanswered questions). The known archaeological evidence has been carefully assembled and the stories written round them, which can make for a rather stilted style: Sheldra'sstory in particular rather reads as a round-up of current thinking on various aspects of Neolithic Orkney.

These are minor quibbles, however. Compared with other children's archaeology books, they are interesting and attractively produced. The greater problem is that their price will mean that they will not receive as wide a readership as the first two books. They will almost certainly be purchased by the sort of person who is concerned that the child should be reading the `correct' sort of literature in their spare time, and they will be looking for their money's worth of serious education when they lay out nearly E5 for the book. Perhaps because of this, these two books do give a slight feeling of worthiness which might not attract the less affluent casual browser, and in some indefinable way they do seem terribly middle-class.

Altogether, then, a visit to a bookshop will show that the range of children's books dealing with prehistory that is likely to be on offer is rather restricted. There seem to be two extremes of choice. For younger children there are cheap paperback stories which are only nominally to do with prehistory, and for the slightly older child there are worthy and rather expensive books which weave a story around archaeological evidence. The latter will attract the approval

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of archaeologists, but they are likely to be bought by people who already place a high value on history and education. The paperback stories, by dint of lower cost, television exposure and basic good fun, will Drobablv be more

widely distribited and sold: The Stone Age and Sheldra books show how competent

and well-Prod'Jced books can be, so it is a pity that the more widely

disseminated view of prehistory will be that provided by Grump and Littlenose. Surely it must be possible to produce cheaper paperback fiction books that are enjoyable and have a realistic prehistoric settin-g?

Reference B U K ~ TF, , 1987, ` M th~e H~unt~er': bias in childrei,'s

archaeology books, Archaeological Review Iron1 Cambridge 6 (2): 157-74.

The second British sea trials of the reconstructed trireme, 20 July-5 August 1988

JOHN MORRISON*

AN?'I(ZUI?`Yreported last year on the start of the British project `to teach yourself how to sail a classical warship'. The second season's trials, benefitting from the lessons of the first, took place in the summer, a n d it begins to come clear that the classical reports of the trireme's

astonishing performance are well founded.

In ANTIQUITY of November 1987 (Morrison 1987) 1 reported on the first British sea trials of the reconstructed trireme, Olympius, held in the previous August, and hoped that at least 9 knots would be achievable with a crew more carefully chosen for size, strength and experience and with lighter oars. In the trials planned for 1988 we should have `a crew practise long enough fully to accustom itself to the special manner of pulling the trireme needs, and to test her endurance on a voyage across the Aegean'.

The crew whiLh arrived on 19July at the Petty Officers' School at Poros, in which the Hellenic Navy had again very generously provided free accommodation, had been carefully selected as far as possible for experience in rowing at sea in fixed seats. All came at their own expense. A few of the 1987 crew came again. A contingent from the USA, some from East-coast rowing clubs and some from San Francisco, another contingent from HMS Daedalus at Lee-onSolent, and another from Brittany, had experi-

ence at sea. Others had practised and been tested in fixed-seat tubs.

The oars had not been made lighter; indeed they were slightly heavier since lead had been inserted into the looms, which made the balance much better.

The difficulty of communication through the ship, experienced in 1987,was mitigated a t first by a loudspeaker system, but when this proved unreliable a pipe was used to give the rhythms and a code of whistle-blasts used for regular commands (as probably in antiquity).

With early elimination of oar-clashing and `crabs', synchronization and a steady longer stroke were quickly achieved under the supervision of Michael Budd, Boris Rankov and their team-leaders. After a few outings the rudders were entrusted to the safe hands of Timothy Shaw.

Among other instruments, a ship's log had been installed. The highest speed recorded on it was 9.6 knots in a short burst, and 9.4 knots over 500 m. The shore-based Geodimeter, however,

* (;ranhams, Great S h d f n r d . (;ainhridgc (:IQ 51X. ANI iuiii r y 6 2 (1988):713-14

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