Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries

The Nazi occupation of the small Channel Island of Alderney irreversibly altered the landscape and lives of both the contemporary population and the subsequent generations. The evacuation of the island’s 1,500 inhabitants in June 1940 paved the way for a period of occupation by the Germans that would last until May 1945. In 1941, Hitler issued an order to fortify the Channel Islands and make them an ‘impregnable fortress’; thus creating ‘Adolf Island’. This book seeks to collate and combine historical and archaeological data relating the occupation landscape in order to produce the definitive guide to the events that took place during this period. It addresses yet unanswered questions relating to the purpose of the occupation, the lives of the labourers, known and missing, and the post-war reaction to this legacy.

Tea on the terrace takes readers on a journey up and down the Nile with archaeologists and Egyptologists. Travellers such as Americans Theodore Davis, Emma Andrews, and James Breasted, as well as Britons Wallace Budge, Maggie Benson, and Howard Carter arrived in Alexandria, moved on to Cairo, travelled up the Nile by boat and train, and visited Luxor. Throughout the journey, readers spend some time with them at their hotels and on their boats. We listen in on their conversations, watch their activities, and begin to understand that much archaeological work was not done at the field site or in the university museum, as many historians have argued. Instead, understanding the politics of conversation in the social studies of science, the book shows that hotels in Egypt on the way to and from home institutions and excavation sites were liminal, but powerful and central, spaces which became foundations for establishing careers, building and strengthening scientific networks, and generating and experimenting with new ideas. These are familiar stories to readers, but Tea on the terrace presents them in a new framework to show Egyptologists’ activities in a seemingly familiar but unknown space. A mix of archaeological tourism and the history of Egyptology, the book is based on original archival research, using letters, diaries, biographies, and travel guides as well as secondary sources.

The ‘bog bodies’ of north-western Europe have captured the imagination of poets as much as archaeologists, confronting us with human remains where time has stopped – allowing us to come ‘face to face’ with individuals from the past. Their exceptional preservation allows us to examine unprecedented details of both their lives and deaths, making us reflect poignantly upon our own mortality. Yet this book argues that they must be resituated within a turbulent world of endemic violence and change, reinterpreting the latest Continental research and new discoveries in this light. The book features a ground-breaking ‘cold case’ forensic study of Worsley Man: Manchester Museum’s ‘bog head’ and brings the bogs to life through both natural history and folklore, as places that were rich, fertile, yet dangerous. Finally, it argues that these remains do not just pose practical conservation problems but philosophical dilemmas, compounded by the critical debate on if – and how – they should be displayed, with museum exemplars drawn from across the globe