The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek.BARRY CUNLIFFE Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe CBE (born December 10, 1939), known as Barry Cunliffe, has been Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford since 1972. In 320 B.C., Pytheas of Massalia (now known as Marseilles, France) wrote an account of an unprecedented voyage he had taken to the British Isles British Isles: see Great Britain; Ireland. and Iceland. That text--On the Ocean--is lost. However, Cunliffe does an admirable job of recreating it. Drawing on the archaeological record The archaeological record is a term used in archaeology to denote all archaeological evidence, including the physical remains of past human activities which archaeologists seek out and record in an attempt to analyze and reconstruct the past. and the surviving writings of Pytheas' contemporaries, Cunliffe assembles a plausible retracing of Pytheas' voyage to file tin fields of Brittany and the amber forests of Iceland and the Baltic region For other uses, see Baltic (disambiguation). The Baltic region is an ambiguous term that refers to slightly different combinations of countries in the general area surrounding the Baltic Sea. , lands believed at the time to be uninhabitable. Placing these events in context, Cunliffe also explains what life was like back then. Pytheas' feat was so extraordinary that it wasn't repeated until Julius Caesar made the trip 300 years later. First published in Great Britain in 2001. Walker & Co, 2002, 195 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $23.00. |
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