In Rudyard Kipling's Just so stories, the Elephant's Child was ‘full of ‘satiable curtiosity’’ and asked a great deal of questions about many things. Martin Bell is likewise full of curiosity about the world and the past, and this enthusiasm comes across clearly in this book. Often illustrated by examples from Bell's own personal research, the volume uses British and international case studies, and the wider global context is welcome. In Chapter 1, Bell examines previous considerations of movement in past societies, and considers the potential of diverse approaches derived from palaeoenvironmental analyses, landscape archaeology, space-time geography, anthropology, critical social theory, and literature and art. Some of the theoretical approaches are considered in more detail elsewhere—in Oscar Aldred's The archaeology of movement (Reference Aldred2021), for example—but Bell deserves credit for trying to weave such varied strands together in an approachable manner. Chapter 2 takes an entertaining and thought-provoking ethnohistoric amble around the Pacific Northwest coast of North America to examine the complex relationships between small-scale human hunter-fisher-gatherer and plant and animal communities and their landscapes, and practices of wayfaring and way-marking. With these in mind, Chapter 3 explores gatherer-hunter routeways in north-west Europe, including natural zones of movement, such as river valleys, mountain passes and woodland clearings, as well as seasonality. Chapter 4 follows on with the increasing evidence for prehistoric human and animal footprints around Britain, placed in a wider global context.
In Chapter 5, Bell moves on to discuss movements and mobility amongst early farming communities, primarily using British regional case studies. This leads into Chapter 6, which examines prehistoric wooden trackways found as preserved waterlogged remains in wetland areas of Britain, Ireland and north-west Europe. Chapter 7 examines barrow alignments in landscapes as proxies for prehistoric pathways in Britain and north-west Europe, while Chapter 8 examines trackways in later prehistoric agricultural landscapes, providing useful sections detailing methodologies for the identification and dating of such features, along with some famous and lesser-known examples. In Chapter 9, Bell takes a watery diversion onto prehistoric boats and riverine and maritime routes around Britain and Europe, outlining the technologies that permitted such movements. In the penultimate Chapter 10, Bell presents a more substantive case study of the Wealden area of south-east England, using multi-proxy techniques and different forms of evidence to take a detailed, close-grained approach to prehistoric connections and movements across these landscapes. In the concluding Chapter 11, the author draws out key themes from the book, but also poses useful questions for future research. Again, Bell's refreshing multidisciplinary approach shows the potential for combining many traditional methods of archaeological and landscape investigation with ongoing developments in scientific analytical and dating techniques, along with more theoretical understandings of how humans interact with and move through the world.
Inevitably with such a wide-ranging volume, there are topics that could have been investigated in more detail. A colleague who is a Mesolithic specialist was a little disappointed that Mesolithic footprints and movements were not explored further. As someone whose main interests lie in later prehistory, I would have liked later prehistoric droveways and trackways to have received more attention. Bell is not always aware of key discoveries from commercial archaeology that are transforming our understanding of movement and the time-depth of routeways amongst past communities. There is no mention, for example, of the ‘Rotherwas Ribbon’—a sinuous stone surface or trackway at least 84m long found near Hereford during developer-funded archaeological work in 2007. Lying partly within a natural hollow, the Ribbon linked other natural hollows and pits filled with burnt stone (Jackson & Sworn Reference Jackson and Sworn2014). It may have originated during the Late Neolithic, and whilst Early Bronze Age pottery and worked flint were found in association, it might have still been a visible feature during the Roman period. At Sharpstone Hill near Shrewsbury, a well-constructed metalled and cambered road surface of at least 191m in length was dated to the later Iron Age by radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating; it was found to have been re-used during the Roman and post-Roman periods (Malim & Hayes Reference Malim and Hayes2010). The original road was probably several kilometres long. A double-ditched trackway excavated at Swillington Common near Leeds by Archaeological Services WYAS in 1999 ahead of the M1–A1 Link Road scheme was created during the Early Iron Age and used for at least a thousand years, well into the Roman period (Howell Reference Howell, Roberts, Burgess and Berg2001). At Melton in East Yorkshire, developer-funded excavations by On-Site Archaeology during 2004–2005 revealed hollowed, double-ditched trackways in use from the Iron Age until the seventh century AD (Fenton-Thomas Reference Fenton-Thomas2011). Similar examples are emerging from across Britain, and their absence made Chapter 8 slightly disappointing. Within these landscapes, and contrary to modern understandings of mobility, it was routeways that were long-lived, permanent features, with settlements shifting over time. Bell does mention examples of Bronze Age and Iron Age linear trackways but misses the opportunity to use the increasing corpus of such features to investigate the rhythms and tempos of movement around past landscapes.
Such criticisms do not detract from the fact that this volume is an impressive and wide-ranging feat of synthesis and scholarship, written in an accessible style, and very well illustrated with photographs, maps, plans and reconstruction drawings. With academic publishers often charging astronomical amounts for archaeological books with a much narrower focus and far fewer illustrations, this volume also represents excellent value for money. This book makes one think deeply about many aspects of landscapes, mobility, movement, wayfaring and way-marking in the past. It should be read as a companion volume to Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit (Reference Solnit2001); Ways of walking: ethnography and practice on foot edited by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst (Reference Ingold and Vergunst2008); Past mobilities: archaeological approaches to movement and mobility edited by Jim Leary (Reference Leary2014); The archaeology of movement by Oscar Aldred (Reference Aldred2021); and Making journeys: archaeologies of mobility edited by Catriona Gibson, Kerri Cleary and Catherine Frieman (Reference Gibson, Cleary and Frieman2021). The trail may now seem a little more familiar, but there is still much to explore in the journey ahead.
