دانلود کتاب بریتانیای مخفی – گنجینه های مخفی

Every step you take in Britain treads on the past. A street now filled with shops and houses might once have been a royal palace. An anonymous farmer’s field glimpsed from a car window might have borne witness to the last gasps of a bloody battle, an event so terrible the people swore it could never be forgotten. An eroded mound under a stand of trees might once have been the holy of holies, a sacred place worth travelling weeks to reach, for generations of ancient people. In the landscape and in overlooked museum cabinets, archaeological treasures of profound complexity wait to be noticed. When you stop and look, magic happens. These wonders transport you into the secret lives of ancient people. These wonders are the stuff of this book. In Britain’s past we have cannibals, shamans, sun-, moon- and waterworshippers. We have Christian initiations and pagan bog sacrifices. We have mummies, mandrakes and magic. Britain boasts a depth of puzzling archaeology unrivalled anywhere else in the world. At least, that’s what I think. Maybe it’s because we have such a variety of landscapes, or unfathomable weather. Maybe it’s because over the millennia so many different peoples have shaped this island, and made their marks in the landscape and on artefacts. Whatever it is, the mysterious past is what got me into archaeology in the first place. The day I went for an interview at Cambridge University as a nervously eager teenager, news of the discovery of Seahenge had just been announced. I sat in a wing-backed armchair with an eminent scholar (Professor Chris Scarre, now at Durham University) and for half an hour we discussed how we might solve the riddle ‘What the heck is it and what the heck is it for?’ I was hooked. The fact that we’re still not sure about the answers to those questions is neither here nor there.