Chapter 4 reads the fiction of Thomas Hardy alongside biblical illustration and iconographic tradition to reveal both Hardy’s Miltonic way of seeing and his literary idiosyncrasy. The chapter begins by analysing Hardy’s use of Miltonic shifts in perspective and scale – described by critics as proto-cinematic – to shape Wessex as a post-lapsarian, sublime landscape. In The Return of the Native and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy’s characters re-enact the Fall, situating themselves within a cyclical Miltonic genealogy. The chapter then turns to Hardy’s allusions to Milton through his focus on hands, in ‘handed moments’ that recall Milton’s haptic imagery to recreate an unstable Eden in Wessex. Finally, the chapter compares biblical and Miltonic illustrations that are brought together in nineteenth-century extra-illustrated Bibles such as the Kitto Bible: this comparison reveals how Milton’s text and its focus on hands reshaped biblical illustration, and supports a reading of Hardy as a writer attuned to the differences between Milton’s Eden and that of Genesis.

Chapter 7 explores the archaeological record of the plateau on the eve of the formation of the Tibetan Empire in the 7th century. Written records produced by Tibetan and Chinese scribes become more helpful in interpreting the Tibetan past.

Describes the principles and application of a wide range of soft-ionization techniques which can be used to characterize larger molecular species, up to proteins and metabolites. This is the area which has grown most rapidly since the publication of the first edition.

This consolidates several chapters in the first edition into one which discusses analytical techniques which have fallen out of favour. Since, however, these techniques have produced many thousands of analyses on archaeological material it considers the issues around using legacy data for modern research.

Chapter 1 argues that apocalyptic images and texts from the late Romantic period onwards respond to John Milton’s poetic treatment of temporality and grief in Paradise Lost, focusing on Mary Shelley’s apocalypse novel The Last Man. Shelley’s work, a project of revivification and memorialisation, challenges more conventional public narratives by embracing fragmentation and combining personal loss and universal catastrophe. In doing so, the novel draws on Milton’s epic, especially Adam’s prophetic vision after the fall. Shelley’s writings, including her letters, journals and Frankenstein, are read alongside John Martin’s apocalypse paintings and mezzotint illustrations of Paradise Lost. The chapter begins by positioning Shelley’s novel as a shared intertext for Martin’s The Last Man and Louis Édouard Fournier’s The Funeral of Shelley, both housed in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. It argues that Martin’s Paradise Lost illustrations more closely parallel Shelley’s literary response to Milton: both recreate Milton’s prophetic temporality and express apocalyptic grief through reference to darkness and light.

Introduces isotope archaeology – the use of mass spectrometry to determine the stable isotope ratios of the lighter elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen) in organic materials including bone and dental enamel, and also the heavier isotope ratios (strontium, lead) on biological tissue and inorganic materials.

Chapter 3 describes the deep prehistory of the human presence on the plateau and focuses on the necessity of genetic and physiological adaptations for successful, permanent life on the plateau. Sites with early dates are described and models for the peopling of the plateau are evaluated.