Prehistoric England

Illustrated by nearly 150 plates and diagrams. It is my aim to describe, within the narrow limits imposed by existing deficiencies in the evidence, the manner in which our forefathers lived before the dawn of history — how they earned their daily bread, the sort of houses they lived in, the handicrafts they practised, their method of miming, the extent to which they traded, their modes of transport, the means they took to defend themselves against attack, the nature of their burial rites and the character of their sacred monuments. I shall endeavour to write of ancient remains, whether monuments or small finds, in terms of the human beings who built and used them. For it is not in surveyors’ plans, nor yet in the contents of museum cases that our common interest in the past centres, but rather in those generations of our forebears by whose labours the foundations of our island history were laid.