Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones
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€27.50
A01=Ken McNamara
A01=Kenneth J. McNamara
adornment
afterlife
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anthropology
antidote
archaeology
Author_Ken McNamara
Author_Kenneth J. McNamara
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=PDZ
ceremony
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creativity
culture
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discovery
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evil spirits
folklore
fossils
funerals
graves
history
illness
inspiration
Language_English
magic
meaning
medicine
mythology
nonfiction
PA=Available
poison
prehistoric
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protection
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religion
rite
ritual
shaman
softlaunch
spirituality
symbolism
Product details
- ISBN 9781789142907
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 12 Oct 2020
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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For at least half a million years, people have been doing some very strange things with fossils. Long before a few seventeenth-century minds started to decipher their true, organic nature, fossils had been eaten, dropped in goblets of wine, buried with the dead and adorned bodies. What triggered such curious behaviour was the belief that some fossils could cure illness, protect against being poisoned, ease the passage into the afterlife, ward off evil spirits and even kill those who were just plain annoying. But above all, to our early prehistoric ancestors, fossils were the very stuff of artistic inspiration.
Drawing on archaeology, mythology and folklore, Ken McNamara takes you on a journey through prehistory with these curious stones, and explores humankind’s unending quest for the meaning of fossils.
Ken McNamara is an Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of many books on palaeontology and evolution, including Dragons’ Teeth and Thunderstones: The Quest for the Meaning of Fossils (Reaktion, 2020).
