1: Friendly and informative
I am an avocational archaeologist taking a silver-smithing course, so naturally I wondered how people with less technology had done what I was doing. This book is a wonderful read if you want to know the basics about pottery, metallurgy, lithic tech, spinning and weaving, dyeing and painting. It was originally written in the 1960's so there is a bit of 'primitive"man"' phraseology, but the tone is respectful. The information is very well presented; I know almost no chemistry but I now understand metal refining better. I recommend this book to anyone high school or over who wants to know slightly more about the cleverness of our ancestors. If you want greater depth, try Pottery Analysis: A SourcebookPrudence Rice for pottery, AndreyevskeyLithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis (Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology)Clovis Blade Technology: A Comparative Study of the Keven Davis Cache, Texas (Texas Archaeology and Ethnohistory Series) or Collins for lithics, and Elizabeth Wayland Barber Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years : Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, but I recommend this book for its tone and the breadth of its subject to all archaeology and economic or social history buffs.
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