Archaeology has been a subject of endless fascination to scholars, students and the general public. For the past three decades, Prof. Brian Fagan has been the key narrator of the story of the past for many, through his textbooks, trade books and numerous magazine and journal articles. In recent years, Fagan has reported on the latest news, theories, and controversies in archaeology through his regular Timelines column in Archaeology Magazine. In Snapshots of the Past, Fagan collects many of these vignettes into a single work, leading the reader on a tour through time and space that ranges from the ascent of the human species to the public controversies that concern today's archaeologist. In these 30 brief chapters, the author offers readers a series of "snapshots" of the issues of greatest contemporary interest: the Eve hypothesis, the peopling of the New World, site looting, the translation of Mayan hieroglyphs, the domestication of animals, the impact of feminism on archaeology, the archaeology of slavery, and evidence of human cannibalism, among many others. Included among the articles are several pieces written specifically for this volume, including a description of the recent, spectacular cave art finds at Chauvet Grotto in France. For instructors of archaeology, the book is a handy compilation of brief, interesting cases to engage your students. For serious archaeologists, the book represents a collection of works of one of the important synthesizers of the field. For the avocational archaeologist, the book provides a fascinating, readable update on issues of current concern.
Brian Fagan was born in England and studied archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia, from 1959-1965. During six years in Zambia and one in East Africa, he was deeply involved in fieldwork on multidisciplinary African history and in monuments conservation. He came to the United States in 1966 and was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1967 to 2004, when he became Emeritus.
Since coming to Santa Barbara, Brian has specialized in communicating archaeology to general audiences through lecturing, writing, and other media. He is regarded as one of the world's leading archaeological and historical writers and is widely respected popular lecturer about the past. His many books include three volumes for the National Geographic Society, including the bestselling Adventure of Archaeology. Other works include The Rape of the Nile, a classic history of archaeologists and tourists along the Nile, and four books on ancient climate change and human societies, Floods, Famines, and Emperors (on El Niños), The Little Ice Age, and The Long Summer, an account of warming and humanity since the Great Ice Age. His most recent climatic work describes the Medieval Warm Period: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. His other books include Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society and Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World and Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age gave birth to the First Modern Humans. His recently published Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind extends his climatic research to the most vital of all resources for humanity.
Brian has been sailing since he was eight years old and learnt his cruising in the English Channel and North Sea. He has sailed thousands of miles in European waters, across the Atlantic, and in the Pacific. He is author of the Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California, which has been a widely used set of sailing directions since 1979. An ardent bicyclist, he lives in Santa Barbara with his life Lesley and daughter Ana.
