Greece in the bronze age (A Phoenix book, P490)

Rating:
Summary: In memoriam - Let us offer at least one short rave
Review: This book should have at least one review, don't you think? I was a student of hers when she was writing it. It was the first of her children (she had two more) and she labored over it for more than a year in very trying circumstances. The problem was, she was trying to teach the Bronze Age and there were no syntheses in a field in which, unless you had the right connections, everything you did or said was wrong. She persisted. There are still no good rivals of this book, and the book is still an excellent overview. It contains no brilliant theses. There is much good realism. If you read between the lines, she foreshadows the later debunking of Schliemann, who planted artifacts in the shaft graves. She well knew that, if you contradicted the wrong people, you would, like Evans' master of archaeology, never work in the field again. But, she put excellence first and came up with an excellent book. The author passed on in February of 2001. I think we were all lucky to have had her for so long. She too is a classic now. One can only hope she knows answer to the mysteries she studied for so long.