A review by sophia608
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz
2.0
If someone were interested in ancient cities from a progressive point of view, and isn’t too concerned with reading evidence, this was a decent read. The writing was fine, learning about the ancient cities interesting, a fairly easy read.
My biggest gripe: there was zero demarcation of which claims were backed up with anthropological evidence and which were pure authorial speculation. Occasionally they throw in a “possibly” or, on the other hand, a “based on archaeological dating,” but in general it’s difficult to parse which of the stories in this book are true. Part of this is expected: the stories and histories of people from millennia ago are at times speculative and imprecise, but some things we do know. I’d have liked to see more explanation of the evidence (where we have it) and more explicit comments about guesswork and other potential interpretations of the data.
On a literary front, the writing is just okay. I have NEVER read any author who uses the word “mused” so frequently — anytime they are talking with an archaeologist, the archaeologist is “musing” over something or other. The interspersed of personal narrative with the story was clunky (why did it start with them mourning their estranged dad’s death?!) and frankly I could have done with fewer quotes from “Jane Doe, a Scientist at University College” — the attempt to include tiny pieces of their visiting the archaeology sites detracted from the histories.
Not sure I fully agree with the thesis (I think a city abandonment is fair to label a collapse, despite the connotations); it definitely gave a anti-white, anti-colonial, anti-hierarchy, very liberal interpretation of ancient societies. It could’ve been more nuanced and I wasn’t fully convinced by some of their claims, but the effort to provide an alternate vantage is appreciated.
My biggest gripe: there was zero demarcation of which claims were backed up with anthropological evidence and which were pure authorial speculation. Occasionally they throw in a “possibly” or, on the other hand, a “based on archaeological dating,” but in general it’s difficult to parse which of the stories in this book are true. Part of this is expected: the stories and histories of people from millennia ago are at times speculative and imprecise, but some things we do know. I’d have liked to see more explanation of the evidence (where we have it) and more explicit comments about guesswork and other potential interpretations of the data.
On a literary front, the writing is just okay. I have NEVER read any author who uses the word “mused” so frequently — anytime they are talking with an archaeologist, the archaeologist is “musing” over something or other. The interspersed of personal narrative with the story was clunky (why did it start with them mourning their estranged dad’s death?!) and frankly I could have done with fewer quotes from “Jane Doe, a Scientist at University College” — the attempt to include tiny pieces of their visiting the archaeology sites detracted from the histories.
Not sure I fully agree with the thesis (I think a city abandonment is fair to label a collapse, despite the connotations); it definitely gave a anti-white, anti-colonial, anti-hierarchy, very liberal interpretation of ancient societies. It could’ve been more nuanced and I wasn’t fully convinced by some of their claims, but the effort to provide an alternate vantage is appreciated.