Forty miles out into the Atlantic from the western isles of Scotland lies the archipelago of St Kilda. Home to human populations for more than 4000 years, the islands inhabitants were evacuated from the main island in 1930 leaving it as a haven for wildlife, a tourist destination and workplace for those studying and monitoring the islands ecology and its radar station built in the 1950s. Many of those writing about St Kilda have emphasised the remoteness and insularity of its environment, ...

Cipières, in the Alpes-Maritimes, is a French upland landscape rich in archaeology and distinctive in its topography. Cipières: Community and Landscape in the Alpes-Maritimes is a unique exploration which brings together a wealth of documentary sources retained in the village with material evidence in the landscape to produce an interdisciplinary and holistic account of the development of one community and its lands. Beginning with a history of the Project, the volume examines the village’...

Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize.Discover the true story of St. Kilda.When the last 36 inhabitants of St Kilda, 40 miles west of the Scottish Hebrides, were evacuated in 1930, the archipelago at 'the edge of the world' lost its permanent population after five millennia.It has long been accepted that the islanders' failure to adapt to the modern world was its demise. Andrew Fleming overturns the traditional view. Unafraid of highlighting d...

First published in 1988, The Dartmoor Reaves is a classic story of archaeological fieldwork and discovery, and a winner of the Archaeological Book Award. This major new edition adds both color illustrations and two substantial new chapters to the original groundbreaking text, which revolutionized our understanding of Britain's prehistoric landscapes.Dartmoor has long been known for the richness of its prehistoric heritage; stone circles, hut circles, massive burial cairns,...

The often harsh and unforgiving Australian landscape was a far cry from what the early colonisers were used to, and it proved a daunting obstacle to settlement. However, a few brave and at times foolhardy men were determined to prove themselves equal to the challenge. AUSTRALIA'S GREAT EXPLORERS looks at the tragedies and triumphs of men such as Wentworth and Lawson, Hume and Hovell, Burke and Wills, Leichhardt and Strzelecki as they battled to conquer the Great Diving Range, find an elusi...

The gripping, marvel-filled account of how a native son took a casual walk up a mountain on Cape Breton Island and made an archeological discovery of world-shaking proportions.In the summer of 2002, at home for his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, Paul Chiasson decided to climb a mountain he had never explored on the island where eight generations of his Acadian family had lived. Cape Breton is one of the oldest points of exploration and settlement in the Americas, with a his...

Explodes the myth that pre-settlement Australia was an untamed wilderness revealing the complex, country-wide systems of land management used by Aboriginal people. Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scient...

The last Ice Age, which came to an end about 12,000 years ago, swept the bands of hunter gatherers from the face of the land that was to become Britain and Ireland, but as the ice sheets retreated and the climate improved so human groups spread slowly northwards, re-colonizing the land that had been laid waste. From that time onwards Britain and Ireland have been continuously inhabited and the resident population has increased from a few hundreds to more than 60 million. Britain Begins is ...

History has always mattered to Scots, and rarely more so than now at the outset of a new century, with a new census appearing in 2011 and after more than ten years of a new parliament. An almost limitless archive of our history lies hidden inside our bodies and we carry the ancient story of Scotland around with us. The mushrooming of genetic studies, of DNA analysis, is rewriting our history in spectacular fashion.In The Scots: A Genetic Journey, Alistair Moffat explores t...

From its earliest inhabitants up to the beginnings of Stewart rule, 'Scotland: A Very Peculiar History - Volume 1' is a lively and informative account of the chequered (or rather, 'tartaned') history of Scotland. Detailing grisly clan wars and the many mythical creatures to look out for while you're out in the wild, this ebook gives an objective account of the nation's history, with 'no added haggis'! Focussing on the more weird and wonderful aspects of Scottish history, such as forgotten ...

The Colony is the story of the marvellously contrary, endlessly energetic early years of Sydney. It is an intimate account of the transformation of a campsite in a beautiful cove to the town that later became Australia's largest and best-known city.From the sparkling beaches to the foothills of the Blue Mountains, Grace Karskens skilfully reveals how landscape shaped the lives of the original Aboriginal inhabitants and newcomers alike. She traces the ways in which relation...

An essential new history of ancient Ireland and the Irish, written as an engrossing detective storyAbout eighty million people today can trace their descent back to the occupants of Ireland. But where did the occupants of the island themselves come from and what do we even mean by “Irish” in the first place?This is the first major attempt to deal with the core issues of how the Irish came into being. J. P. Mallory emphasizes that the Irish did not have a single origin, but ...