This book belongs to a comparatively rare style of writing for scholars, the memoirs of a lifetime engagement in science. According to the comment on the back cover, “It provides a very readable and original account of a life embracing field and laboratory work from Orkney to Egypt and Mongolia to Peru. The diverse research extends from human fossils, to cemetery studies and bog bodies, to dogs, hair chemistry, bone pathology, soils and vitrification.” Brothwell’s aim for this book is “… to see the sciences applied to answering archaeological problems, and also to establish that archaeology is to a large degree applied science” (p 6).

Donald Reginald “Don” Brothwell (1933–2016) was a prominent figure in the field of archaeological science over the last 50 years, especially in biological archaeology (the study of ancient human and animal bones, and related topics); for a description of Brothwell’s career see, for example, Eklund et al. (Reference Eklund, Townend and Haddow2003). His best-known publications include two editions of Science in Archaeology (Brothwell and Higgs Reference Brothwell and Higgs1963, Reference Brothwell and Higgs1969), and its updated and completely revised version A Handbook of Archaeological Sciences (Brothwell and Pollard Reference Brothwell and Pollard2001). It would be fair to say that Brothwell was one of the scholars who laid the foundation for modern archaeological science. He is also responsible for the creation of the first periodical specialized particularly in geoarchaeology and related subjects, the Journal of Archaeological Science, in existence since 1974; and for the launch of the book series Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology established in 1985, with more than 20 titles published to date.

Brothwell’s major achievements are in the interdisciplinary field which is now called “biological archaeology” (also “bio-archaeology” or just “bioarchaeology”), the investigation of skeletal remains of humans and animals in order to understand the patterns of prehistoric life. The set of samples included Paleolithic human skulls from Near Eastern localities (Skhul and Tabun); Niah Cave in Borneo (SE Asia); and several sites in Africa and Europe. Human skeletons from the British Isles belonging to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and the Middle Ages, were the subject of Brothwell’s long-term studies since his amateur excavations in Leicestershire in the early 1950s; he was also keenly interested in finds from ancient Egypt and Nubia. For the future, he predicts the use of the latest technological developments, like the extraction of ancient DNA, to investigate the genetic relationship between individuals found in the long barrows and round barrows of southern Britain (p 178).

Brothwell was among first scholars who understood the importance and initiated direct radiocarbon dating of human bones, mummies, and bog bodies from different parts of the world (Europe, Near East, and South America), and stable isotope studies of pre-Columbian dogs from Peru (e.g. Brothwell and Burleigh Reference Brothwell and Burleigh1975; Brothwell et al. Reference Brothwell, Malaga and Burleigh1979; Burleigh and Brothwell Reference Burleigh and Brothwell1978; Pollard et al. Reference Pollard, Brothwell, Aali, Buckley, Fazeli, Hadian Dehkordi, Holden, Jones, Shokouhi, Vatandoust and Wilson2008). This was a valuable contribution to geoarchaeology during its formative period in the 1960s–1970s.

In his early years, Brothwell was taught by several scholars who were instrumental in the development of archaeological science, including Frederick Zeuner (chronology and paleoenvironment) and Kathleen Kenyon (archaeological stratigraphy). Brothwell was one of the last undergraduate students who attended lectures of the famous archaeologist V Gordon Childe in the mid-1950s (p 152–3; see also Brothwell Reference Brothwell2009). The influence of Kenneth Oakley, one of the pioneers in the direct dating of ancient human remains and the exposer of the Piltdown forgery, is also acknowledged (p 155–6).

Throughout his long and highly productive career, Brothwell was acquainted with several iconic personalities in archaeology, and he describes them with some degree of humor: “In Cambridge [in the late 1950s], I had entered a den of tigers, with all too many large egos. It did not take me long to realise that Grahame Clark was not compatible with Glyn Daniel…” (p 20). About the time spent at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (1970s–1980s), he writes: “Sir Mortimer Wheeler was great as an actor, full of pomp and ceremony, but to me no real gravitas. … John Evans, quietly laughed at by Grahame Clark in Cambridge, was neither leader nor an outstanding archaeologist, but he did try to be kindly at least. David Harris, a geographer with sadly no laboratory expertise, was at least a good administrator … Peter Ucko, a great ‘cultivator’ of people and highly intelligent, sadly lacked a soul, and with it a compassionate understanding of people” (p 25).

Besides scientific matters and scientists themselves, Brothwell discusses more general issues related to human culture. His thoughts are quite straightforward; for example: “Population increase, linked to urbanism, has given rise to social and religious hierarchies of an exploitative kind, supported by militarism. The common man, including me, has paid the price for this since the Neolithic. The nature of privilege changes, but the phenomenon remains. This is the nuclear essence of ‘culture’ over the last few thousand years. It is the dominance of the alpha male transformed into social, economic and religious differentials, favouring a few” (p 169).

I would recommend this book to everybody who is working (or is going to work) in the field of archaeological science. A lower-priced electronic version, affordable for the majority of researchers and students, is also available from the publisher.