Report from within a monster

I’ve begun reading Åsa M Larssons (Ting & Tankar) thesis; Breaking and Making Bodies and Pots: Material and Ritual Practices in Sweden in the Third Millennium BC.

400+ pages makes for a thick and heavy book and academia normally isn’t a light read but this is quite an easy read for an academic work. This is in part due to a good flow and good usage of language and in part due to a good disposition of the book where each chapter has a clear beginning and end and is well marked off. A lot of nice pictures and graphs gives some rest to dreary eyes but are also and more importantly illustrative to the text.

Some first notes; I’m not sure I agree with Asa in naming it a monster (at least not a growling one), at a first glance it’s more of slowly building crescendo of pitted ware data; background information, descriptions and syntheses mixed with some fun facts and good writing. Quite a pleasent read.

I’ve started with the osteological parts of the thesis on which I’ll posts some notes later on, as I read it through a little bit more in detail.

Magnus Reuterdahl