Customer Reviews

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Vol. 2

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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This voluminous, five volume set, is meant to serve as a comprehensive dictionary of the ancient near east. Though the topics covered are impressive, the main drawback of this volume is the surprisingly small amount of illustrations and pictures that are incorporated in the text. In a work that claims to summarize the archaeology of the ancient near east, the few pictures, plans, etc., seriously lowers the intrinsic value of the encylopedia. This said, nevertheless, these volumes can be used for the convenient summaries of the archaeology of various sites and the basic relevant bibliography.

This thing is simply great - Looks good, nice paper, great content, not overly academic/pretentious in its stile of writing. Also serves as a good read when not looking for specific topics. Im sorry I did not discover that treasure sooner.

This Oxford publication is the Motherload for sites in the Near East. Just about every site, with the exception of those found after 1996-97, in the near east is listed in this beautifully bound set (vol 1-5). It is an excellent source for any Archaeology student researching sites in the Near East. One draw back of the volumes is the lack of diagrams and photo's. However, the volumes are very well written with the student or researcher in prespective. All sites are in alphabetical order, making location a task easy to accomplish. This set is a must for serious students in the field.

(Notice: The above book offered by Amazon.com is just the first of a set of five books. I refer to all Volumes in my review, not just the one book presented above.)