David Brown Book Company

The archaeology of ritual.

Historians, art historians, students of performance and religion, and other scholars — as well as archaeologists, of course — were asked to ponder what archaeology might be able to reveal about ritual, and how. They shared their thoughts at a January 2004 seminary in Los Angeles. One of the goals of the endeavor was to narrow the definition of ritual to make it a more useful concept. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Dungeness and Romney Marsh; barrier dynamics and marshland evolution.

Two major studies — the Rye Area Project and the Dungeness Foreland Project — track the ancient changes to these former shorelines and marshland in the late Holocene, in part through radiocarbon dating. This volume presents a detailed analysis of various aspects of the projects, including pollen-based investigations dating during the late Holocene up to c.1000 AD, the process and impact of peat formation and marine inundation, and stratigraphic models derived from deep drilling samples. The volume is heavily illustrated with b&w photos and tables. Oversized: 8.5x12 inches. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Flora; the erbario miniato and other drawings; 2v.

The Erbario Miniato is an early 17th century herbal catalogue that formed part of the Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo and is now in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, UK. This two-volume set reproduces, in color, the two hundred or so herbal botanical drawings of the Erbario, which are thought to have been commissioned by Federico Cesi, Prince of Acquasparta (1585-1630), founder of the Academia dei Lincei in Rome. Also included are reproductions of some 60 illustrations that formed a companion volume to the Erbario, but were dispersed early in the 20th century, in addition to select other drawings commissioned later. Accompanying the images are notes on the medicinal value of the plants catalogued taken largely from Andrea Mattioli's 1568 edition of Dioscorides' De materia medica and further textual explication written for these volumes. An opening essays discusses the drawings in the contexts of the development of art and the development of botany. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Health policy and hospital mergers; how the impossible became possible.

Sigurgeirsdóttir has been involved in healthcare in Iceland for some 25 years as an administrator, academic, researcher, and policy maker. This text makes available the doctoral thesis in health and social policy she completed at the U. of London in May 2005. Sigurgeirsdóttir offers a comparative analysis of two governmentally-led hospital mergers in the 1990s, one in London and one in Reykjavik, when the national governments decided to merge teaching hospitals in their capitals as part of larger administrative reforms. In an effort to understand why it was finally possible to merge the hospitals in the 1990s after failed attempts during the 1980s, the study presents historical analysis of the main explanatory factors, along with analysis of the political climate in Britain and Iceland during the 1980s and 1990s. No subject index. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Journal of wetland archaeology; v.7.

Attesting to the growth in this field, this issue of the journal presents 7 research articles, 2 review articles, and 10 full-length book reviews. The research articles concern sites at Biskupin, Poland; Cumbria, the UK, Lake Luokesas, Lithuania; Lake Valgjärv, Estonia, and Gedney Moor, the UK. The volume is well illustrated with b&w plates. It is not indexed. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)