Ancestors
Alice Roberts
Archaeologistology
The word "archaeology" can mean two things -- it can refer to the things that archaeologists are interested in or the things that archaeologists do. Typically when someone says, "I'm interested in archaeology" you would assume they meant the former: that they are interested in early humans, particularly as reflected in their material remains. But if that person was a sociologist speaking in her professional capacity, you might instead think she means the second thing: the activities and interactions of archaeologists. I will refer to the first subject by the shorthand "human prehistory" and the second "archaeologistology".
Cards on the table: I personally am far more interested in human prehistory than archaeologistology. Based on the evidence of this book, Alice Roberts is more interested in archaeologistology. Ancestors would more accurately have been subtitled "A history of two centuries of British archaeologists".
This begins in chapter 1, which is about several modern archaeologists planning a large-scale application of new technology (genome sequencing) to all the ancient skeletons they can lay hands on, but comes to full flower in chapter 2, "The Red Lady". The Red Lady of Paviland is the skeleton of a man (yes, really) who lived and died 33,000 years ago in Wales. Roberts has far less to tell us about this man than about a man who lived much more recently, the pioneering English archaeologist William Buckland who discovered the skeleton and drew a number of almost uniformly wrong conclusions about it. He was a character, and Roberts clearly loves to tell about him and all the pioneering women archaeologists who helped him out and got little credit for it. She also tells us about later archaeologists who came along later and set Buckland's errors right.
Look, Buckland was an interesting person -- no doubt about it. But stories about him tell us very little about human prehistory. They tell us much more about archaeologistology, specifically the history of British archaeology.
And so it goes. Roberts takes us through her seven burials, using them to describe two centuries of British archaeology, its advances and controversies. She does occasionally touch on human prehistory -- this typically happens when she quotes some actual archaeologist whom she interviewed. (Roberts, it should be said, is at this point in her career more of a television personality than a practicing archaeologist. Nothing wrong with that, especially as she knows her stuff, especially when it comes to bones.) It is completely clear that the archaeologists Roberts talked to are much more interested in human prehistory than in archaeologistology.
I have another bone to pick with Roberts. Her discussions of archaeologistology are tediously prescriptive. She will go on for pages about what archaeologists SHOULD do, and especially what they should NOT do. These are obviously important questions, but they receive far too much attention in Ancestors.
In summary, I was disappointed. I read Ancestors in the hope of learning more about prehistoric Britons. In the event, I mostly learned about British archaeologists, who are, in broad outline, pretty similar to American molecular biologists or German physicists, or academics anywhere.