Paul G. Bahn
Author of Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice
About the Author
Paul G. Bahn obtained a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Cambridge and is an acknowledged expert on Ice Age cave art. He is the author and editor of several books on archaeology and resides in the U.K. (Bowker Author Biography)
Series
Works by Paul G. Bahn
The Story of Archaeology: The 100 Great Archaeological Discoveries (1995) — Editor — 289 copies, 2 reviews
Written in Bones: How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead (2003) — Editor — 254 copies, 3 reviews
Unearthing the Past: The Great Archaeological Discoveries that Have Changed History (2005) 37 copies
Ancient Obscenities: Or Things You Shouldn't Know About the History of Mankind! (1999) 36 copies, 3 reviews
An Enquiring Mind: Studies in Honor of Alexander Marshack (American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph) (2010) 2 copies
Legendary Sites of the Ancient World: An Illustrated Guide to Over 80 Major Archaeological Discoveries (2009) 2 copies
Rock Art Studies: The Post-Stylistic Era or Where Do We Go from Here? : Papers Presented in Symposium a of the 2nd Aura (1993) 2 copies
Grobowce, Groby i Mumie 1 copy
Régészeti nyomozások 1 copy
Mas allá de Altamira: Guía de las cuevas decoradas de la Edad del Hielo en Europa (Mensula Patrimonio) (Spanish Edition) (2015) 1 copy
Flight into pre-history 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1953-07-29
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Cambridge (PhD)
- Occupations
- archaeologist
- Organizations
- Society of Antiquaries (Fellow)
Archeological Institute of America (Corresponding member) - Short biography
- Paul G. Bahn is a leading archaeological writer, translator, and broadcaster. He is a Contributing Editor of the Archaeological Institute of America's Archaeology magazine, and he has written extensively on prehistoric art. He has authored and/or edited many books on more general archaeological subjects. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Corresponding member of the Archeological Institute of America. He was an advisor on the BBC's The Making of Mankind and a consultant on a segment of WGBH's NOVA Trilogy Human Origins. [from Archaeology: The Essential Guide to Our Human Past, Smithsoinian, 2017]
- Nationality
- UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- UK
Members
Reviews
This book is the weirdest, dullest combination of "what I did on my summer vacation," lies, and offensive bullshit.
The book isn't actually about the archaeology of Hollywood, which I assumed (I think fairly) from the title and summary. Instead, it precisely recreates the experience of your incredibly boring great uncle telling you at unnecessary length about his trip to Los Angeles. The "facts" (more on those scare quotes later) are exactly the same kind of thing you'd get if you took a show more couple of bus tours in the area, and the pictures are, well. Someone's vacation snaps. Bahn went to the Guadalupe Dunes, some theaters, some museums, and a whoooole lot of parking lots, and he is happy to tell you all about them, including every single address he visited. (He apparently didn't go to Universal Studios, though, because he talks about the millions of people who take the studio tour but fails to mention that it is a theme park and that's why they go there.) Bahn does spend a little time at the ends of the chapters imagining what an alien archaeologist might make of the material remains of Hollywood's past, but that is, actually, fiction.
But then, a lot of this book is fiction. (Extremely dull, poorly written fiction.) I am not an expert or even a fan of golden age Hollywood. I just live in Southern California and read the occasional book on the subject. I should not be able to find tons of errors in this book, and yet here we are. Some of my favorites of his errors:
- He gets Mary Pickford's age wrong. How do you write a book on golden age Hollywood without knowing when Mary Pickford was born?
- He calls Sessue Hayakawa S. I. Hayakawa. Those are two different people. S. I. was an academic and politician. Sessue was an early film star, and again: if you love the golden age, I would think you'd know that.
- He reports multiple urban legends as facts. Joni Mitchell has said multiple times that Hawai'i was the inspiration for "Big Yellow Taxi." She's been very clear! Bahn says that a Hollywood hotel called the Garden of Allah inspired the song, which is fully an urban legend, and not even one that makes any sense.
- Bahn also says, without any qualifiers at all, that Thomas Ince was murdered. There's no way to know for sure, but he probably wasn't, and Ince shouldn't be alongside, say, William Desmond Taylor in a list of early Hollywood murder victims, let alone first on the list.
There are also a bunch of more minor errors; it was bad enough that if I read anything I hadn't already seen in a more reliable source, I put the book down and researched it. (And a lot of times it was wrong.)
And then there are the times when Bahn misses the boat on much larger, more important topics. Early on, he notes that it's "...inevitable that the author of [a book on Hollywood] should be from the Old World," apparently because Americans are just too close to the film industry to appreciate it. My suggestion to him would be that, judging by this book, he might want to stay in his lane. Any decent Californian, just as an example, would not have said that the missions were "intended to look after the Indians' spiritual well-being," because we know how wrong and offensive that is and on how many levels. We also could have told him that there's more than just ignorance behind the loss of so many old buildings. We have earthquakes here, Paul. We have regular updates to our building codes to keep people alive. And it is really, really hard to retrofit a building to code; in some cases it's impossible. Oh, and Bahn says multiple times that it's possible to grow up in Southern California without learning anything about local history, and he's not wrong. I mean, you can grow up ignorant of history anywhere if you just believe. But I assure you, if you went to public school here and paid attention, you know some stuff about local history, including about the industry. (I think this is an old man yelling at clouds thing. The early days of Hollywood matter the most to him! Why don't they matter the most to everyone?)
There's also a touch of just absolute bewilderment in this. This book was published in 2014. It has the shortest references list I've ever seen in a non-memoir non-fiction book, and most of the references are from the 1980s and 1990s. It also has a 76 page appendix (in a 280 page book) listing a ton of celebrity graves with no commentary, something you can very easily get from the internet. Why is that there? Why is any of this here? What is the actual point of this book?
Spoiler warning: there is no point. This book sucks. It's wrong. It's bad. It's boring. It's not even well-written. (And I'm not ever going to be less mad about his addiction to exclamation points. You are not required to use one every two paragraphs, just FYI.) It's weird that it got published, and weirder that it got published without anyone ever mentioning to Bahn that he was humiliating himself in public by putting his name on this. show less
The book isn't actually about the archaeology of Hollywood, which I assumed (I think fairly) from the title and summary. Instead, it precisely recreates the experience of your incredibly boring great uncle telling you at unnecessary length about his trip to Los Angeles. The "facts" (more on those scare quotes later) are exactly the same kind of thing you'd get if you took a show more couple of bus tours in the area, and the pictures are, well. Someone's vacation snaps. Bahn went to the Guadalupe Dunes, some theaters, some museums, and a whoooole lot of parking lots, and he is happy to tell you all about them, including every single address he visited. (He apparently didn't go to Universal Studios, though, because he talks about the millions of people who take the studio tour but fails to mention that it is a theme park and that's why they go there.) Bahn does spend a little time at the ends of the chapters imagining what an alien archaeologist might make of the material remains of Hollywood's past, but that is, actually, fiction.
But then, a lot of this book is fiction. (Extremely dull, poorly written fiction.) I am not an expert or even a fan of golden age Hollywood. I just live in Southern California and read the occasional book on the subject. I should not be able to find tons of errors in this book, and yet here we are. Some of my favorites of his errors:
- He gets Mary Pickford's age wrong. How do you write a book on golden age Hollywood without knowing when Mary Pickford was born?
- He calls Sessue Hayakawa S. I. Hayakawa. Those are two different people. S. I. was an academic and politician. Sessue was an early film star, and again: if you love the golden age, I would think you'd know that.
- He reports multiple urban legends as facts. Joni Mitchell has said multiple times that Hawai'i was the inspiration for "Big Yellow Taxi." She's been very clear! Bahn says that a Hollywood hotel called the Garden of Allah inspired the song, which is fully an urban legend, and not even one that makes any sense.
- Bahn also says, without any qualifiers at all, that Thomas Ince was murdered. There's no way to know for sure, but he probably wasn't, and Ince shouldn't be alongside, say, William Desmond Taylor in a list of early Hollywood murder victims, let alone first on the list.
There are also a bunch of more minor errors; it was bad enough that if I read anything I hadn't already seen in a more reliable source, I put the book down and researched it. (And a lot of times it was wrong.)
And then there are the times when Bahn misses the boat on much larger, more important topics. Early on, he notes that it's "...inevitable that the author of [a book on Hollywood] should be from the Old World," apparently because Americans are just too close to the film industry to appreciate it. My suggestion to him would be that, judging by this book, he might want to stay in his lane. Any decent Californian, just as an example, would not have said that the missions were "intended to look after the Indians' spiritual well-being," because we know how wrong and offensive that is and on how many levels. We also could have told him that there's more than just ignorance behind the loss of so many old buildings. We have earthquakes here, Paul. We have regular updates to our building codes to keep people alive. And it is really, really hard to retrofit a building to code; in some cases it's impossible. Oh, and Bahn says multiple times that it's possible to grow up in Southern California without learning anything about local history, and he's not wrong. I mean, you can grow up ignorant of history anywhere if you just believe. But I assure you, if you went to public school here and paid attention, you know some stuff about local history, including about the industry. (I think this is an old man yelling at clouds thing. The early days of Hollywood matter the most to him! Why don't they matter the most to everyone?)
There's also a touch of just absolute bewilderment in this. This book was published in 2014. It has the shortest references list I've ever seen in a non-memoir non-fiction book, and most of the references are from the 1980s and 1990s. It also has a 76 page appendix (in a 280 page book) listing a ton of celebrity graves with no commentary, something you can very easily get from the internet. Why is that there? Why is any of this here? What is the actual point of this book?
Spoiler warning: there is no point. This book sucks. It's wrong. It's bad. It's boring. It's not even well-written. (And I'm not ever going to be less mad about his addiction to exclamation points. You are not required to use one every two paragraphs, just FYI.) It's weird that it got published, and weirder that it got published without anyone ever mentioning to Bahn that he was humiliating himself in public by putting his name on this. show less
This work on the art of the European Ice Age (now some quarter of a century old) is an excellent example of how to provide information in an accessible way on a difficult subject.
Bahn is a sound scientific populariser. The book also acts as a tribute to the photographer Jean Vertut who died before the final publication of the book. The photography is generous, wide-ranging and attractive.
The book tells the story of the historic study of ice age art, its context, the necessity for caution show more over reproductions, speculations as to age, a description of forms, techniques and subject matter and a review of possible meanings.
It is in this last area that Bahn might have done himself no favours with career academics trying to move up the slippery pole with some theory of purpose. He is sceptical of what we can know about the meaning of this art when its production extended over such a large area of time and of place.
He reviews all the many theories behind the art but is rather good at standing back and questioning the degree to which the modern will to make sense of it all has directed both illustration and theory alike into untenable assumptions.
He certainly does a rather neat job in questioning the desire of modern man to insert a sexual content where none is to be found reliably and I found myself questioning even the received wisdom of it being hunting magic - maybe it is but how can we possibly know?
This is not a counsel of despair because (at the time of writing) there was much work to be done but he is probably right that any attempt to supply a universal theory of the palaeolithic mind might be better geared down to a regional or even site level.
There was one point where he had me smiling - we do not even know for certain if much of the art was produced by women rather than men and a plausible case (amongst so many plausible cases) could be made for menstrual ritual, especially given signs of use of a lunar calendar.
In short, my conclusion is that anyone who says they know very much about meaning and purpose is engaged in creative careerism or a-historical cultural polemic. No one knows - all surmise.
(Bahn does, however, open the crack in the door to let in serious consideration of the 'mind in the cave' thesis which links at least some of the imagery to consciousness studies in a plausible way).
What is more appealing are the facts on the ground - the book opens with two sets of children's footprints in different caves in the Ariege, one set deliberate and playful. Five little kids whose presence but not their mentalities are immortalised - who needs theory?
(Note that there is an updated version of this book with substantially the same text but with more photographs a decade later called 'A Journey Through the Ice Age' and this might be the preferred purchase) show less
Bahn is a sound scientific populariser. The book also acts as a tribute to the photographer Jean Vertut who died before the final publication of the book. The photography is generous, wide-ranging and attractive.
The book tells the story of the historic study of ice age art, its context, the necessity for caution show more over reproductions, speculations as to age, a description of forms, techniques and subject matter and a review of possible meanings.
It is in this last area that Bahn might have done himself no favours with career academics trying to move up the slippery pole with some theory of purpose. He is sceptical of what we can know about the meaning of this art when its production extended over such a large area of time and of place.
He reviews all the many theories behind the art but is rather good at standing back and questioning the degree to which the modern will to make sense of it all has directed both illustration and theory alike into untenable assumptions.
He certainly does a rather neat job in questioning the desire of modern man to insert a sexual content where none is to be found reliably and I found myself questioning even the received wisdom of it being hunting magic - maybe it is but how can we possibly know?
This is not a counsel of despair because (at the time of writing) there was much work to be done but he is probably right that any attempt to supply a universal theory of the palaeolithic mind might be better geared down to a regional or even site level.
There was one point where he had me smiling - we do not even know for certain if much of the art was produced by women rather than men and a plausible case (amongst so many plausible cases) could be made for menstrual ritual, especially given signs of use of a lunar calendar.
In short, my conclusion is that anyone who says they know very much about meaning and purpose is engaged in creative careerism or a-historical cultural polemic. No one knows - all surmise.
(Bahn does, however, open the crack in the door to let in serious consideration of the 'mind in the cave' thesis which links at least some of the imagery to consciousness studies in a plausible way).
What is more appealing are the facts on the ground - the book opens with two sets of children's footprints in different caves in the Ariege, one set deliberate and playful. Five little kids whose presence but not their mentalities are immortalised - who needs theory?
(Note that there is an updated version of this book with substantially the same text but with more photographs a decade later called 'A Journey Through the Ice Age' and this might be the preferred purchase) show less
This book exemplifies what a “very short introduction“ should be: take a complex and extensive topic & provide a comprehensive, jargon-free and illuminating overview. The author shares his passion for the topic while clearly pointing out the pitfalls & problems the field of archaeology faces. His quirky humor & clear language make reading this book a pleasure. Highly recommended.
Lots of interesting stuff, but the presentation is uneven. The authors are Paul G. Bahn, described as a “writer, translator, and broadcaster specializing in archaeology” and Jean Vertut, “the foremost photographer of European cave art.” Mr. Vertut died in 1985; the book was published in 1997. This combination leads to a large-format “coffee table” book, with a lot of photographs that seem to chosen for artistic effect rather than to illustrate points in the accompanying text.
The show more text is straightforward enough; Mr. Bahn goes through the history of the discovery of Pleistocene art (“portable” art – carved or engraved objects – was accepted as authentic immediately, while what Mr. Bahn calls “parietal” art – painted, carved or molded on cave walls – was dismissed as forgery for years; ironically one of the iconic examples of Pleistocene portable art, the “Venus of Brassempouy”, is now suspected to be a forgery).
Although there’s a chapter titled “A Worldwide Phenomena”, cave art is mostly confined to France, Spain, and Sicily despite the presence of apparently suitable caves in the rest of the world. Although some of the painted art was done with reed brushes or buffalo fur daubers, one of the most common methods required the artist to fill their mouth with paint and spit it on the wall (it’s noted Australian aborigines still use this method; modern archaeologists experimenting discovered they could paint a convincing bison this way in under an hour). I was interested in the amount of experimental archaeology Bahn discusses, for example – “is it possible to walk barefoot four kilometers into a cave using torches for illumination, paint a canvas, and walk back out again without running out of light” (yes). Bahn notes that the pigments used were mostly ocher and charcoal; they were often mixed with a binder (fish glue, for example) which didn’t work at all in the humid caves (but suggests there may once have been a lot of art painted on dry, outside surfaces that has been long lost).
Bahn’s discussion of the “reason” for cave art is quite interesting. With my casual acquaintance with the subject, I had assumed “hunting magic”, based on some cursory reading (the idea that drawing animals will make them easier to hunt); Bahn allows that as a possibility, noting that Australian aborigines still do that; that most of the animals displayed are game rather than predators; and that animals often seem to be depicted as if they were lying on their sides after being killed. However, he also notes that there’s often a discrepancy between the animals shown on cave walls and the bones found at surface sites in the same area. “Fertility magic” is also a possibility; drawing lots of animals in a cave will make them abundant outside (Australian aborigines still do that, too). Possibly relevant is the fact that animals are often drawn or carved overlapping, suggesting that the act of depiction was more important than the result. Recent (at least, as of the 1997 publication date) studies show some interesting things; certain animals (horses and deer) are much more likely to be drawn on convex surfaces, while others (bison and aurochs) are much more likely to appear on concave surfaces. Bahn devotes a lot of time to French investigators who decided that there was a definite pattern to art, with certain animals shown in certain parts of caves (entryway, left passages, right passages, deep inside, etc.) with the idea that the viewer was supposed to walk by in particular sequence; he’s understandable skeptical, as the caves are complicated enough that what constituted (for example) a “left passage” could be adjusted to fit the theory.
The caves also contain non-representative paintings – patterns of dots, dashes, squares, circles, etc. There’s limited speculation on what these might be – directional signs? The very beginning of writing? Trying out a new brush?
One major deficiency is the lack of a clear time scale. Bahn repeatedly refers to Pleistocene cultural periods – Aurignacian, Magdalenian, etc. – long before providing a time chart; then the chart he shows dates from 1976, and doesn’t even illustrate current thought at that time, but rather the history of the use of these names. Another possible deficiency is the lack of any cultural background information; there’s no discussion of lithics, paleoclimate, human fossils, or other information that might have some bearing on the makers of the art; however, this is already a pretty long book.
As mentioned, abundant color photographs; both large scale and detail maps of cave locations (although few plans of the caves themselves). A long bibliography, listing books in multiple languages; and adequate index. Probably now out of date, which explains why it was pretty cheap, but interesting enough to make me want to do more reading. show less
The show more text is straightforward enough; Mr. Bahn goes through the history of the discovery of Pleistocene art (“portable” art – carved or engraved objects – was accepted as authentic immediately, while what Mr. Bahn calls “parietal” art – painted, carved or molded on cave walls – was dismissed as forgery for years; ironically one of the iconic examples of Pleistocene portable art, the “Venus of Brassempouy”, is now suspected to be a forgery).
Although there’s a chapter titled “A Worldwide Phenomena”, cave art is mostly confined to France, Spain, and Sicily despite the presence of apparently suitable caves in the rest of the world. Although some of the painted art was done with reed brushes or buffalo fur daubers, one of the most common methods required the artist to fill their mouth with paint and spit it on the wall (it’s noted Australian aborigines still use this method; modern archaeologists experimenting discovered they could paint a convincing bison this way in under an hour). I was interested in the amount of experimental archaeology Bahn discusses, for example – “is it possible to walk barefoot four kilometers into a cave using torches for illumination, paint a canvas, and walk back out again without running out of light” (yes). Bahn notes that the pigments used were mostly ocher and charcoal; they were often mixed with a binder (fish glue, for example) which didn’t work at all in the humid caves (but suggests there may once have been a lot of art painted on dry, outside surfaces that has been long lost).
Bahn’s discussion of the “reason” for cave art is quite interesting. With my casual acquaintance with the subject, I had assumed “hunting magic”, based on some cursory reading (the idea that drawing animals will make them easier to hunt); Bahn allows that as a possibility, noting that Australian aborigines still do that; that most of the animals displayed are game rather than predators; and that animals often seem to be depicted as if they were lying on their sides after being killed. However, he also notes that there’s often a discrepancy between the animals shown on cave walls and the bones found at surface sites in the same area. “Fertility magic” is also a possibility; drawing lots of animals in a cave will make them abundant outside (Australian aborigines still do that, too). Possibly relevant is the fact that animals are often drawn or carved overlapping, suggesting that the act of depiction was more important than the result. Recent (at least, as of the 1997 publication date) studies show some interesting things; certain animals (horses and deer) are much more likely to be drawn on convex surfaces, while others (bison and aurochs) are much more likely to appear on concave surfaces. Bahn devotes a lot of time to French investigators who decided that there was a definite pattern to art, with certain animals shown in certain parts of caves (entryway, left passages, right passages, deep inside, etc.) with the idea that the viewer was supposed to walk by in particular sequence; he’s understandable skeptical, as the caves are complicated enough that what constituted (for example) a “left passage” could be adjusted to fit the theory.
The caves also contain non-representative paintings – patterns of dots, dashes, squares, circles, etc. There’s limited speculation on what these might be – directional signs? The very beginning of writing? Trying out a new brush?
One major deficiency is the lack of a clear time scale. Bahn repeatedly refers to Pleistocene cultural periods – Aurignacian, Magdalenian, etc. – long before providing a time chart; then the chart he shows dates from 1976, and doesn’t even illustrate current thought at that time, but rather the history of the use of these names. Another possible deficiency is the lack of any cultural background information; there’s no discussion of lithics, paleoclimate, human fossils, or other information that might have some bearing on the makers of the art; however, this is already a pretty long book.
As mentioned, abundant color photographs; both large scale and detail maps of cave locations (although few plans of the caves themselves). A long bibliography, listing books in multiple languages; and adequate index. Probably now out of date, which explains why it was pretty cheap, but interesting enough to make me want to do more reading. show less
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