Paths to the Past
Subtitle: Encounters with England's Hidden Landscapes
Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited; Allen Lane
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 139
ISBN-13: 9780241299982
Subjects: Excavations (archaeology), great britain; Great britain, history; Great britain, social conditions; Great britain, historical geography
Description: Landscapes reflect and shape our behaviour. They make us who we are and bear witness to the shifting patterns of human life over the generations. Formed by a complex series of natural and human processes, they rarely yield their secrets readily. Bringing to bear a lifetime's digging, Francis Pryor delves into England's hidden urban and rural landscapes, from Whitby Abbey to the navvy camp at Risehill in Cumbria, from Tintagel to Tottenham's Broadwater Farm. Scattered through fields, woods, moors, roads, tracks and towns, he reveals the stories of our physical surroundings and what they meant to the people who formed them, used them and lived in them. These landscapes, he stresses, are our common physical inheritance. If we can understand how to make them yield up their secrets, it will help us, their guardians, to maintain and shape them for future generations.