Bogucki (Princeton U.) and Crabtree (anthropology, New York U.) head an impressive group of archaeologists and anthropologists--at universities and museums in the UK, the US, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark, Poland, Sweden, and Germany--who have written the entries for this two-volume reference. It is appropriate for undergraduate, advanced high school, and general reader audiences. It spans the end of the Ice Ages until the rise of governments and record-keeping brought prehistory to an end, and the editors have deliberately extended the geographical area considered beyond western Europe to include Slavic lands. The volumes begin with introductory chapters describing the field of archaeology and essential elements of prehistoric cultures, including such topics as settlement patterns, gender, ritual and ideology, and warfare and conquest. Subsequent entries pertain to postglacial foragers, the transition to agriculture, the consequences of agriculture, the age of metal, the Iron Age in Europe, and the early middle ages and migration period. B&w illustrations, maps, diagrams, and drawings support the text. Annotation ♭2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

First published in 2005. This original study the author writing in 1936 has tried to sketch the character and general movement of the economic and social evolution of Western Europe from the end of the Roman Empire to the middle of the fifteenth century.