This book is a col­lec­tion of excerpts from the writ­ings of pio­neer archae­ol­o­gists from the eigh­teenth, nine­teenth, and early twen­ti­eth cen­turies. It includes such mile­stones as Schliemann’s exca­va­tions at Troy, Champollion’s deci­pher­ing of Egypt­ian hiero­glyphs, Bingham’s dis­cov­ery of Machu Pic­chu, and Carter’s open­ing of the tomb of Tutanhka­men. This is but a small sam­ple of the more than sixty excerpts cov­er­ing major archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­er­ies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South and Cen­tral Amer­ica. The writ­ings are fas­ci­nat­ing for their main con­tent, but also for what they reveal about the evo­lu­tion from wealthy relic-hunting anti­quar­i­ans to method­i­cal, sci­en­tific, and schol­arly archaeologists.

The style, qual­ity of writ­ing, and intended audi­ence vary from piece to piece — some are quite easy to read and under­stand, while oth­ers are intended for schol­ars of a par­tic­u­lar spe­cialty and era. For the lat­ter type, ref­er­ence mate­ri­als such as his­tor­i­cal atlases are quite help­ful. In many cases, there seem to have been maps, dia­grams, or other illus­tra­tory mate­r­ial present in the orig­i­nal texts which have not been repro­duced here. Ceram would have done well to either remove ref­er­ences to plates and fig­ures, or to actu­ally include those ref­er­enced in the excerpts. This edit­ing mis­step aside, I found this to be a fas­ci­nat­ing — although at times dif­fi­cult — read.