Scenes from Prehistoric Life: From the Ice Age to the Coming of the Romans

An invigorating journey through Britain’s rapidly evolving prehistoric landscape, and an insight into the lives of its inhabitants, in fifteen scenes.

In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of Britain’s prehistory, from the Old Stone Age (about one millions years ago) to the arrival of the Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen chronologically arranged portraits of specific ancient British landscapes. Through his archeological expertise, Pryor is able to bring the people of prehistory to the fore: their beliefs, the way they lived their lives and earned their living.

Whether writing about the early human family who trod the estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk circa 900,000 BC, the Mesolithic inhabitants of Starr Carr in North Yorkshire who worked red deer and elk antlers into jewellery, the Bronze Age farmers of the fertile soils of Flag Fen, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain’s first towns, Pryor brings the ancient past to life: revealing the daily routines of our ancient ancestors, and how they coped with both simple practical problems and more existential challenges.

Pryor masterfully gives us an i