Space in prehistoric Bohemia.

Space in prehistoric Bohemia. EVZEN NEUSTUPNY (ed.). Space in prehistoric Bohemia. 176 pages, 1figure, 24 tables, 24 colour plates. 1998. Prague: Czech Republic Czech Republic,Czech Česká Republika (2005 est. pop. 10,241,000), republic, 29,677 sq mi (78,864 sq km), central Europe. It is bordered by Slovakia on the east, Austria on the south, Germany on the west, and Poland on the north. Academy of Sciences Institute of Archaeology The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. ; 80-86124-09-6 hardback. Three recent arrivals cover settlement, landscape and space inContinental Europe in various forms, languages and chronologies.KUCKENBURG provides a useful summary of Siedlungsarchaologie in Germanyfrom the Stone Age to the post-Roman Iron Age. The author offerswell-illustrated access to key sites (Bilzingsleben, Heuneburg,Manching) and landscapes (Aldenhovener Platte and the Federsee) byprojecting important detail of key discoveries into the overall trendsof prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to . The book is well illustrated and concludes with tips onhow to visit sites and museums, as well as a useful bibliographycovering recent books in German and English. FICHTL covers a shorterchronological span and different geographical range. The central themeis the oppidum, and consequently the last 150 years of the Iron Age. Aseries of chapters define the term, and then analyse architecture,functions, environment (including some information of rural settlement)and the oppidum's demise. The geographical focus, although withreference to the centre and east of the oppidum range (e.g. some aspectsof Manching and Zavist), draws more from the research in the western,French, zone. Again, this is a well illustrated source book where recentresearch, particularly on the more structural features of oppida, can beaccessed. NEUSTUPNY is altogether more interpretative in��ter��pre��ta��tive?adj.Variant of interpretive.in��terpre��ta in feel, drawingtogether a series of case-studies and themes (events/ structures,memory) in pursuit of the `social and ideological conditioning ofspatial structures' (p. 7). These ideas are explored in terms ofthe experience of the authors (NEUSTUPNY, Venclova and Kuna) in Bohemia.Whereas the first two, from a Franco-German tradition, are broadlyempirical in tradition, this last volume, from the Czech Republic,starts from the premise `that any meaningful research project mustinclude theoretical considerations from its very beginning' (p. 9).