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Malcolm Todd has written a book which, as will be evident, is an uncompromisingly technical treatment, and as such deserves judgement from others of comparable archaeological expertise. This reviewer has no such expertise, but modestly proclaims himself one of those 'classical historians' whose dabblings in this area are noted in Todd's preface. What has this volume to offer to one whose acquaintance with Germania is conditioned by the perspective of the Romans themselves, by the pages of Caesar and Tacitus-and their classic interpretation by E. A. Thompson (The Early Germans, 1965)? The Roman historian certainly finds himself breaking new ground, for instance, when confronted, among sundry categories of evidence, by 'the stomach-contents of corpses found in peat-bogs' (p. 121). But it is the broader canvas of this book's viewpoint which is most rewarding to the 'layman'. The assumptions, derived from the classical sources, that the Rhine represented the frontier between civilisation and barbarism, and that the 'Germans' were confined to the territory immediately beyond its banks, both collapse when archaeology sets to work. The map of Germania is shown to extend northwards into Scandinavia and eastwards to the Vistula; while the cultures of that huge area are revealed to have advanced steadily towards the level of those within the Roman Empire. The archaeological details amassed in this volume confirm, in the positive terms of the legacy of the peoples them- selves, that 'levelling-up' of barbarian society over the centuries to the standards of culture of the Roman provinces on its borders-a process only glimpsed in the literary record, and then only in terms of social and military organisation. For all the value of widening one's vision far beyond the Rhine, this panorama does introduce one obvious complication: the author makes extreme demands on his readers' mastery of the geography of a large chunk of Europe. The sketch-maps provided are not as communicative as they might be, and the frequent mention of places and regions in the text presumes a far greater awareness of the geography than that possessed at any rate by this reviewer. Yet to be sent in search of an atlas of Europe is perhaps a salutory reminder to the Roman historian of the real message of a professional, archaeological study of the early Germans such as this: they were rather more than barbarian tribesmen beyond the frontiers of the civilised world; indeed, they were the peoples who were to transform Roman provinces into the Europe of the middle ages. E.D.HUNT Swansea BRITAIN IN HISTORY: 2 (1066-1485). By Paul Titley. Mills and Boon, 1975. Pp. 254. £ 1.75 (paperback). This is one of a series of five books designed for '0' level and C.S.E. work. Its twenty chapters consist of narrative of political affairs, confined to Britain except for an unsatisfactory chapter on the Crusades, alternating with descriptive sections on the countryside, towns and trade, castles, churches, monasteries, and surnames. In conclusion, there is a gazetteer