Storytelling in archaeology has many layers to it and can be viewed from different directions in response to numerous questions. Here, I examine two of the main options: how do archaeologists tell the story of our past? How can we grasp and study stories that were told in the past? Both are important. Storytelling and scientific archaeology often seem to exclude each other, and the scholarly community is in parts divided between extremes such as ‘archaeologists are scientists and should only present results’ and ‘archaeologists should deliver a picture or story of past lives based on their findings’. At the most basic level, this pitches hard facts against re-imagining. Personally, I find the latter approach to be more rewarding as a reader and it certainly has a bigger impact on an audience beyond archaeologists, although any interpretation should be based on as much evidence as possible. In this New Book Chronicle, four deliberately diverse examples of storytelling are reviewed to give a glimpse of different approaches, ranging from combinations of exhibitions and innovative technologies, to well-proven formats of many small tales to tell the bigger story and a multi-angled approach to study one object.
The story of the island landscape of Uist is brought back to life to help engage a wider audience in Uist unearthed. This book is one of the first I have come across that is based on an app. It uses new technology yet explains the archaeology and history in a clear and refreshing style by being highly informative. Ancient Egypt in 50 discoveries combines many stories of outstanding and unusual finds with the story of Egyptology, its research as well as its scholars. Whereas Picture worlds: storytelling on Greek, Moche, and Maya pottery goes back to the second-best way of telling a story, not through words but through images. The book is based on an exhibition and places the narratives on pots from distinct cultures next to each so that some essential attributes become visible. Readers of the Lost Ark combines in a captivating way the many tales of this legendary object from the Old Testament, which still fascinates and enthrals people today. All four books draw strongly from a well-described knowledge base but also have an emphasis on the personal experience of the authors with the material studied and the previous scholars, which gives the presented volumes a further enjoyable dimension.
Emily Gal & Rebecca Rennell with Jake Clarke & Alison Johnston. 2025. Uist unearthed: 5000 years of prehistory and history told through the interactive exploration of five archaeological sites. Turnhout: Brepols; 978-2-503-61635-3 paperback €42.
The Uist Virtual Archaeology Project started in 2020 and was aimed at the general public, visitors and local communities alike, to deepen an understanding and engagement with the archaeology of Uist, a group of islands in the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. In 2021, the ‘Uist unearthed’ app was introduced, using maps and interactive features to explore sites across Uist. This is the book of the app. It delivers the background to the content on the app and guides the reader around the landscape through time, visiting five settlement sites: the roundhouses at Cladh Hallan for the Bronze Age; the wheelhouse at Cill Donnain and the broch at Dún Torcuill for the Iron Age; the Norse longhouses at Bornais; and the medieval hall at Dún an Sticir. Through this long-term view, nuances and changes in the history of settlement become visible.
The first chapter ‘Landscape and environment’ introduces the natural history of the islands, which is the foundation for the stories of the landscape that follow, a landscape that was changed and shaped by human occupation over the past 7000 years. The Neolithic sites, chambered tombs and settlement sites along the freshwater lochs, are briefly described. The moorlands in the centre and along the east coast, where bogs appeared extensively from around 3000 BC, differ immensely from the landscape on the west coast. Here, the machair, a Gaelic term for areas along the coast where marine sands were formed by the wind, created the basis for new low-arable land that overlay the shoreline and extended further inland, before being covered by grasslands. This type of habitat is unique to the Outer Hebrides and parts of Ireland. In Uist it is closely connected to the island’s settlement patterns and its crofting landscape. These long-developing processes settled to a stable landscape at the beginning of the Bronze Age, when settlement on the machair intensified and the area was used till early historical times. Both environments on the island, waterlogged bogs and the marine sands, deliver excellent conditions for the preservation of archaeological evidence. This is one reason why several long-term archaeological projects from different UK universities excavated the settlement sites here. The results of these excavations are the basis for the knowledge comprised in this book.
The following four chapters look at specific sites, although each is comprehensively set in their time and wider background within Scotland and the British Isles. Details on excavation history, results and interpretation for each settlement follow—a timeline running along the bottom of the page helps to orientate when things happened. The book is beautifully and vividly illustrated throughout with maps, photographs of excavations, finds and the landscape, sometimes with the houses ‘rebuilt’ with augmented reality, 3D models of objects (such as a Bronze Age penannular ring), digital reconstruction of finds (such as different pottery wares) and artistic images.
The occupational timeline of Cladh Hallan with its artistic impressions is especially inspiring, and enhances the understanding of the different finds across 1500 years at the site, from cremation spaces to settlement areas. The Iron Age case studies highlight two different dwelling strategies with the wheelhouse on the machair and the broch on a freshwater islet. The case studies provide details on the buildings’ histories, for example, in the last case the medieval hall of Dún an Sticir was built inside an Iron Age broch and stones were reused and some of the walls incorporated. They also illuminate the everyday activities of people who lived there, based on the archaeological data, such as bone working and animal husbandry as well as taking part in special events, evidenced by ritual pits in the Iron Age houses and burials under the floors of the Bronze Age houses.
The book is connected to the free app ‘Uist unearthed’ to be used on a mobile device which scans and recognises certain pages in the book and then shows on the screen some of the content, such as the 3D models (such as a Ringerike cylinder with a dancing animal) or augmented reality (all of the buildings are recreated) and audio files (in English and Gaelic). It was wonderful to be able to see a short animation about the mummy burials (where one mummy is set together from multiple bodies) in Cladh Hallan and to ‘step inside’ the roundhouses and the Viking longhouse, complete with crackling fires, all from my office desk. These same features can be used on site, where the app allows the visitor to see where the houses stood and what they looked like in the landscape and inside. The last chapter describes the development of the project and the impact this new approach to re-engaging with archaeological heritage had and how enthusiastically it was taken up by the public.
Another connecting factor is the use of Gaelic—still the first language for many people in the island community—which is intertwined throughout the book; for example, place names are explained and Gaelic speakers can be heard via the app. The tremendously positive feedback for the whole project led to new funding being awarded in early 2025 to enhance six more sites on Lewis and Barra, and hopefully a book as excellent as this will follow as well.
Emily Gal and Rebecca Rennell deliver an outstanding book, telling the story of Uist using clear and accessible language, which is not an easy task when they had to explain some diverse and difficult settlement excavation results in short summaries. Placing this settlement history within its natural landscape and through the Gaelic language and folklore, the authors connect the sites to today’s visitors and bring them to life in a colourful way without compromising on the scientific knowledge: archaeological story telling as its best.
Stephanie L. Boonstra & Campbell Price. 2025. Ancient Egypt in 50 discoveries. London: Egypt Exploration Society; 978-0-85698-258-3 paperback £25.
With this volume, editors Stephanie Boonstra and Campbell Price deliver the printed outcome developed from an online course of the same name created by the Egypt Exploration Society during the Covid-19 times. It follows the now well-worn format developed by the British Museum and the BBC of narrating long-term history through the kaleidoscope of selected artefacts and their biographies (McGregor 2010). The 50 discoveries highlighted in the book are from museums and collections across the world from Britain to Japan, America to Denmark and Canada to Australia—but all were the consequence of funding and support from the Egypt Exploration Society. This organisation was founded as the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1882 by Reginald Poole, a curator at the British Museum, and the Egyptologist and novelist Amelia Edwards. It emerged as a response to the damage and decline Edwards witnessed while visiting monuments in Egypt, to raise awareness as well as to sponsor excavation and recording. The organisation did not intend objects to be exported from Egypt, yet only one year later a partage system was introduced whereby archaeological finds were divided between the museum in Cairo and the excavator and funder who were then able to take the artefacts to overseas private collections and public institutions. The resulting impact on the archaeological excavation of sites in Egypt and Sudan and the global distribution of the discoveries was immense and continued until the 1980s.
The book starts by not only introducing the Egypt Exploration Society and the partage system but also the fundamental—and rarely acknowledged—contribution of past generations of the Egyptian archaeological workforce who were typically the ones who made the featured discoveries. The text is organised chronologically with six chapters covering the Pre- and Early Dynastic period (c. 4400–2686 BC) through to the Graeco-Roman period (332–395 BC). Each chapter has a well-written introduction summarising the period, followed by selected discoveries that are explained and interpreted in concise narratives of around 500 words each. The Egyptian Exploration Society funded excavations by famous Egyptologists, such as Flinders Petrie at many important and iconic sites such as Abydos, Saqqara, Amarna, Tanis and Naukratis, so there is no shortage of potentially spectacular finds with fascinating stories to tell. There is an unsurprising, and perhaps unavoidable, emphasis on elite funerary material culture and sites in the 50 discoveries. Highlights include the stunning gold, turquoise, lapis lazuli and amethyst jewellery from the tomb of King Djer, the much-debated ivory statuette of Khufu, the Pharaoh for whom the Great Pyramid of Giza was built, and an unfinished bust of Nefertiti. The authors, however, deliberately sought to go beyond the stereotypical tales of Pharaonic tombs and temples and they include accounts of the woollen sock from Antinöopolis, the papyrus containing the Coptic translation of Homer’s Iliad and the beer jar from Dendera. Anecdotally, some watercolour paintings by the 17-year-old Howard Carter (then employed on the Archaeological Survey of Egypt project in 1891) are presented, and we learn that only two years later, he would write plaintively to his superior: “Please to remember that I am an artist & cannot see what way digging for antiquities should advance me in my future career” (p.76)! Throughout the chapters there are additional introductions to diverse subjects relevant to the discoveries. These include: the ancient Egyptian family and marriage as well as magic and medicine; periods of time such as Amarna and the Kushite dynasty; and descriptions of scholarly approaches such as Flinders Petrie’s pioneering seriation techniques, understanding Realism in Egyptian art and how the brightly coloured glass objects were made.
Written by experts in an accessible and enjoyable style, lavishly illustrated throughout and packed with details and insights that inspire the reader to want to learn more, this book will appeal to a wide audience. Beyond the two main authors (and editors), the contributors are from universities and museums in Britain, Western Europe, America and Egypt. The Egypt Exploration Society-orientated selection filter and the ‘50 discoveries’ format combined with the many short text contributions delivers multifaceted spotlights across ancient Egypt rather than a comprehensive narrative. Ancient Egypt combines many stories; it introduces not only fascinating discoveries and a sound chronological overview but also highlights the vibrant past of Egyptology, from the workforce to researchers and to the lasting impact they had on the field.
David Saunders & Megan E. O’Neil (ed.). 2024. Picture worlds: storytelling on Greek, Moche, and Maya pottery. Los Angeles (CA): Getty; 978-1-60606-905-9 paperback $40.
Picture worlds: storytelling on Greek, Moche, and Maya pottery is the accompanying book to the 2024 exhibition of the same name at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, USA. In looking at these three very different traditions of imagery, David Saunders and Megan O’Neil, with a group of experts, open up new ways of interpreting them as well as searching for modes of storytelling through pictures. The beautiful and often intriguing images on the vessels take centre-stage throughout the book and on 46 plates at the end.
Though widely separated by time and space, the three societies have some shared characteristics, such as figural art being employed on a wide variety of media (including murals, metalwork and textiles) but also on fired clay, which endured (apart from breaking into pieces) over time, as it could not be recycled (unlike metal or wood). Furthermore, their art on pots was portable, and it was often transported great distances. The difference found in previous analyses and interpretations is mainly due to the state of literacy in different cultures; many texts endured in Ancient Greek, especially describing tales of gods and heroes, and the Maya used hieroglyphs as their writing system, though not as many texts survive, but the Moche did not use a written language. This book focuses on the images. The three traditions of image making are compared to find similarities and differences and to highlight the connection between people and their stories, many of which were never put into writing, and the painted images, especially for the Moche people, are the only echo of these tales.
Due to the time and space between these cultures, the first part of the book ‘Makers and users’ introduces each one, covering the chronology, geography, social organisation and political structures. Furthermore, details about the production of the vessels and the people who used them are provided as well as information on the contexts from which they stem. This delivers a framework for the three pottery traditions which allows the reader to comprehend the narratives in their imagery in the second part, not to compare styles but rather to tease out the potential and modes of storytelling that these painted vessels initiated (and still do).
The Greek pottery is the oldest discussed here, the black- and red-figured ceramics, mainly produced in Athens, date to the Archaic to Classical periods (700–480 BC). These painted vessels were used mainly for symposia, a private drinking custom, usually for men within the elites of society. This kind of pottery was traded all over the Mediterranean, possibly as part of the export of the symposium custom, and some motifs were possibly chosen for export and not for the local consumer.
An overview of the Moche culture (AD 200–850), which was located in what is now coastal Peru, follows. The painted vessels discussed here, the so-called stirrup-spout bottles (dating mainly for the later phase from AD 500 onwards) were, for the large part, made especially for funerary rites and as grave goods. The mythological content displayed on the vessels can also be found on other media (such as murals, wood, textiles, metalworking). Many sub-styles can be discerned but all use just two colours, typically cream and red.
The Maya ceramic vessels presented here are from the Late Classic period (AD 550–850) when polychrome narrative scenes were at a creative peak. The brief overview on the Maya culture in Mesoamerica situates them in the larger tradition of Maya art and religion. Like the Athenian ware, the painted vessels were made for the consumption of food and drink, often they were also given as gifts and some became grave goods.
The second part, ‘Pictures and stories’, discusses the imagery on the presented vessels, first a more general view and then focusing on certain examples of storytelling. For the Greek ceramics, the famous story of the Trojan war is analysed in the way it was transmitted through the images on pottery. One of the main figures on the Moche pots is the so-called Wrinkle Face, a hybrid creature of half man/half animal, found in diverse scenes. My favourite examples though are the lima bean warriors, beans with human arms, legs and faces shown armed and fighting other beans. For the Maya the images of the maize god in narrative scenes are debated. All three traditions and examples have figures that are often shown in motion and use the rounded shape of the vessel to evoke a dynamic, and not a static, story and provide evidence that the images are remnants of tales that were once being told. When relying heavily on textual sources, it is often assumed that there is a set or correct storyline but perhaps that was not always the case. Variation may have been essential to keep the story interesting, with some main points being set but the rest of the story remaining open for invention and interpretation. There is a parallel here with today’s convention to reinterpret on screen famous stories such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at least every generation. The stories painted on the vessels were meant to be distributed and shared to keep them alive and possibly to share values and beliefs. With this book (and exhibition) placing three different storytelling cultures next to each other, new stories are being created and the painted pots continue to fulfil their original aim: inspiring people to tell stories.
The juxtaposition of Greek, Moche and Maya figural art delivers new ideas on how to study these painted images and queries and re-evaluates previous research approaches. Especially fascinating and thought-provoking are the ideas and findings on the importance that storytelling and image making have for the transmission of knowledge and traditions in each society, but also as part of our shared human past that endures strongly into our time. This book impressively succeeds in two ways: investigating how stories were told in the past while simultaneously (re-)telling through the images on the pots many (at least for me) new stories.
Kevin M. McGeough. 2025. Readers of the lost ark: imagining the Ark of the Covenant from ancient times to the present. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-765388-3 hardback £22.99.
This book tells the story, or rather many stories, about one famous and legendary object: the Ark of the Covenant which held the Ten Commandments. Kevin McGeough takes the reader on a personal journey not to find the ark but rather its meaning from its first mention in the Old Testament to contemporary popular culture. The Introduction to this refreshingly unusual book follows the author’s own journey, partly through inspiration from the 1981 Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark, into Near-Eastern archaeology and how, after many years, the ‘real’ ark became a subject of his scholarly interest again. The first four chapters gather and discuss the information on the ark that can be gleaned from ancient sources, contemporary with the ark and later ones. Furthermore, it explores what the archaeology can contribute, from the region—biblical Israel—relevant to the story of the ark, as well as similar religious equipment and the development of images and meaning of the ark from the Iron Age to Roman Period to Late Antiquity and medieval times. The five following chapters are about the different ‘readers’ of the story and the ‘real raiders’ of the ark and they conclude by revealing pseudo-archaeological ‘antics’.
The written evidence for the ark is collated and the ark’s story pieced together from the Old Testament. The achievements and challenges of biblical studies and further sources, marked by ever newer translations and new interpretations of the same texts, are detailed. The exact description of the ark as commissioned by Moses in the Bible is astonishing, and has been debated over in the last millennia. References to the ark in the Bible become increasingly diffused and infrequent until it is hardly ever mentioned. The ark was a vessel for the Ten Commandments and a sacred object for the Israelites, worshipped with special rituals and seen as a place where God would appear. It was carried with them to the Promised Land, where it became a powerful weapon, and even brought down the walls of Jericho. It was last known to be in Solomon’s temple and has been searched for ever since.
The second chapter delves into the archaeology of the ark. First, it explains the methodology of past biblical archaeology which, not unlike the Classical archaeology of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, embarked on a quest to find the historical places of the Bible and the question of where the ark is seemed more of an issue than what the ark was. Modern archaeology has not set out to legitimise ancient texts, but rather to understand the discoveries of sites and artefacts from their own context, where the written sources (texts and inscriptions) may be linked as evidence. Specifically, the time when the ark was ‘in use’ is a time span of much debate as it concerns the historicity of the United Monarchy under Saul, David and Solomon (Iron Age IIA, 1000–925 BC), where no consensus has been reached yet. Instead of figuring out where and what exactly happened in the text of the Bible, I agree with the author that it is indeed more interesting and rewarding to study how the ark was understood in its own time. This can be made visible when studying similar religious contemporary ‘devices’. Similarities can be found in Egypt and Mesopotamia, though in the cults of other gods and goddesses. The ark is different, because icons of God are forbidden, but the ark can be seen as the ‘empty’ seat of God. A striking analogy is the Anubis shrine in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The next chapters outline the images and architecture that allow changes to be discerned in the use and meaning of the ark in early Judaism and later in early Christian communities. The ark becomes an ‘object of historical memory’ often displayed in art rather than an actual religious device as described in the scripture. For instance, the use of the ark as a container for the words of God is similar with the Jewish Torah ark, in which the first five books of the Bible are stored. The ark itself and its whereabouts are also the subject in works of later writers, Greek and Roman philosophers; their interpretations lead on the change in character of the ark in art and literature into more of a metaphor in medieval times.
All of these ancient sources were used by the ‘real raiders’, explorers, who searched for the ark’s resting place in the nineteenth/twentieth century following the crumbs of information to the possible location of the ark: such as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where it is assumed Solomon’s temple stood, and the ark’s last certain location. This lured many adventurers in search of it, among them, the illustrious Parker expedition (1909–1911) and pursuits of Rabbi Getz (1980s) are highlighted in the book. Other possible locations and further pseudo-scholarly attempts reached far beyond Jerusalem, all the way to Japan.
Next the adventures of ‘Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark’, probably the best-known new story of the ark, is explored, and how it influenced popular culture and pseudo-archaeology. After reading this chapter I will have to watch the movie again, intrigued by all the angles from which it can be viewed, beautifully interwoven by McGeough. This leads on to modern models of the ark and franchise and fandom, mainly drawing on the movie rather than the ancient artefact.
The Ethiopian story of the ark is detailed in Chapter 8; for many Ethiopians, it is not lost but kept safe there to this day. Whether this is the biblical ark or not is not proven and does not matter here, as it is a profound part of the Ethiopian Christian community and the faith in the ark is real.
The final chapter unmasks past and current trends of the pseudoarchaeology of the ark and is an excellent and important contribution which helps to identify and dismantle the unhinged proposals of discoveries made by such people, not only on the ark but on many other subjects, such as the common ‘aliens built the pyramids’.
The chapters are engagingly written and the diverse strands well interconnected. I enjoyed it very much, though it needs some digesting and reflection as so much information is transmitted. Instead of notes in the text the author delivers a ‘Bibliographic essay’ which is extremely useful to follow up on the arguments made.
To sum up, this is an inspiring volume, the author enlightens on the many stories about the ark. Where it is not so much important exactly what and where the ark is, but rather what it meant to the Iron Age people we learn of in the ancient texts, and what role it played in the beginning of a new religion and what it became a metaphor for. As the author says: no serious archaeologist is searching for the ark, only pseudo-scholars do so. Despite this, the ark has, to this day, an inspirational impact, spiritual or popular, for many people. Maybe one day, without us looking for it, the ark will be found (maybe safely cared for in Ethiopia).
