A brief overview of the Oxford Companion to Archaeology

by A. Tyrrell

At the risk of sounding hagiographic, there was precious little I could do to fault this volume/dictionary/'how to' guide (etc.), no matter how hard I tried -- and believe me I tried hard. My critical bloodlust was not aroused by any of my minor quibbles. Often my inclination is to try and prove myself against such comprehensive guides, but to be fair, it took quite a bit of hunting around the more esoteric recesses of the clutter that is my brain for me to come up with topics that were not listed. The Companion is so comprehensive as to be mind-boggling. If somebody was so far out of their right mind as to sit down at Acheulean and finish up several weeks later at the entry for zooarchaeology, they would be a fantastically well-read generalist but with such an insufficient grasp of the minutiae of individual arguments as to be easily flummoxed by their subtler aspects. But this is unfair -- that is why we have experts -- and written guides such as this one should be introductory in nature and a useful doorway to the relevant literature for those who wish to expand their knowledge of particular debates. The Companion achieves this admirably and I have only managed to unearth a few problems.

Firstly, the Companion leaves out extensive amounts about practical archaeology. This is how most people come into contact with the discipline, at least in the UK, and many people remain excavating archaeologists because it is so much fun, among other reasons. So perhaps a touch more on techniques and methodologies might have been useful. This brings me to my second point which is that the f-word (fun) is conspicuously absent. Archaeology is great fun, and this book is dry in parts. I suspect that space constraints prevented the fullest possible treatment of many very large topics which have been condensed to a catalogue of dates, places, and typological generalisation for the most part. Understandably, archaeology and the law has been left out because it varies so greatly from place to place. Past people, in the 'what were they like?' 'how did they live?' school of investigation are very often absent too. Finally, the most telling indictment of the discipline is the list of contributors: so many Anglo-Americans, so few other nationalities. Of course, there are occasional non-Western contributors, but they are in general few and far between. I suppose this should not be a surprise, but it is a little sad to see the roll-call there in print.

Enough griping! On the plus side, the time lines at the end were very useful and no doubt open to huge controversy. Surprisingly, there is an index at the back, which struck me as a little unusual in a volume laid out in 'dictionary format'. On the whole, the Companion is an excellent volume, despite some small niggling points. A good buy, if I had the money!

About the reviewer
Andy Tyrrell is a PhD student studying Anglo-Saxon population dynamics at the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield.

Copyright © A. Tyrrell 1998

Copyright © assemblage 1998