4 replies to this topic

[Gunnar Creutz]

There is a new book out for those interested in Swedish megalithic graves.
It's written by the famous Christopher Tilley and is titled "The Dolmens and Passage Graves of Sweden: An introduction and Guide". Published in 1999. ISBN 0-905853-36-9. 242 pages.
First there is 40 pages of introduction to the megalithic graves in Sweden, including a bit about Tilley's own ideas about the landscape.
The rest of the book is a guide to 150 different megalithic sites in Sweden: 60 megalithic graves from Scania, 9 from Halland, 4 from Oeland, 46 from Vaestergoetland, and 31 from Bohuslaen. Every site are presented with a black-and-white photo, a plan drawing, a description of the site, and a description of how to get there. The quality of the pictures are not so good, but good enough to give an impression what it is about. There are some flaws in the descritions too, nevertheless it is probably the best guide-book to megalithic graves in Sweden written in the English language.

Gunnar

[Diego]

It seems very interesting indeed. I will probably look for it at Amazon.com. Or do you have any suggestion on where we could find this book?
I'm curious: what are the flaws in the descriptions of the sites you were referring to?

Diego

[Gunnar Creutz]

The book is published by

Institute of Archaeology
University College London
31-34 Gordon Square
London  WC1H 0PY

There was no e-mail-address in the letter that followed this book when it arrived to Falbygdens museum today. I was absolutely the first who borrowed the book from the museum as you can see. B^)

Re: the flaws.
Well, maybe most of you would say it is very minor flaws, and maybe they are not so numerous that my first impression was.
First of all. Tilley do only sometimes use the proper parish names and so called RAÄ-numbers of the sites. Instead he had mixed them with number-systems that he made up on his own. That could be very confusing. This is thou the problem with most of the books that Tilley had written.
2. The plans of the tombs sometimes have the arrow indicating north in wrong directions. One of my teachers at university laughed a lot over that, and said that the arrows was pointing randomly in all directions. When taking a closer look at the arrows they are not that bad, even if a few of them are totally wrong.
3. During my first brief check I spotted some errors in the descriptions of how to get to the sites. It now seems that I stumbled upon some of the worst errors imediately.
4. The hand-drawn maps is sometimes missing some information. But this is just as good (or bad) than the average tourist maps one use to find.
5. The errors of the descriptions. At some sites the construction details are described in a generalising and cursory way. There are for example different details (like a wall and a threshold) that looks similar on the plan drawing that has been confused in the text.

Gunnar

[Gunnar Creutz]

I forgot one thing.
The price of the book seems to be 25 GBP, but I don't know if that is the price that shops that sells the book have to pay or if it is the price that others have to pay.

Gunnar

[Gunnar Creutz]

I have now done some statistical calculations and found out that my teacher actually was right about the arrows indicating north at the plan drawings in Tilley's book. I measured the chamber directions for the tombs from my area and compared them to a quite reliable source. The result was that there are "not a statitically significant relationship" between the two sources. Only 6 % of the directions seems to be similar.

Well, apart from this most of Tilley's guide book seems to be very useful.

Gunnar