The Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen: Bell Beaker Burials at Boscombe Down, Amesbury, Wiltshire: 27 (Wessex Archaeology Report) - Softcover

'Beautifully illustrated and highly readable.'

'This book...is an excellent and enjoyable read.'
--Steve Marshall "Fortean Times "

'The almost mythic names - Bowmen, Archer, and Companion' - make these prehistoric individuals, along with Ötzi the Iceman, arguably the best known European individuals from the remote past.'

'The magic of these stories comes across.'
--Christopher Catling "Current Archaeology "

'I am genuinely impressed.'

'One can no longer write about Bell Beakers without referring to this elaborate and significant work.'

'In all I have read the book with great interest. It is a lot of value for relatively little money.'
--Prof. Harry Fokkens, University of Leiden "Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society "

Found a few kilometres from Stonehenge, the graves of the Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen date to the 24th century BC and are two of the earliest Bell Beaker graves in Britain. The Boscombe Bowmen is a collective burial and the Amesbury Archer is a single burial but isotope analyses suggest that both were the graves of incomers to Wessex. The objects placed in both graves have strong continental connections and the metalworking tool found in the grave of the Amesbury Archer may explain why his mourners afforded him one of the most well-furnished burials yet found in Europe. This excavation report contains a series of wide-ranging studies and scientific analyses by an array of experts and a discussion of the graves within their British and continental European contexts.