Historium
Richard Wilkinson and Jo Nelson
Big Picture Press
This handsome, outsized volume offers a virtual museum experience within hard covers. The opening pages – the ‘Entrance’ provide a brief rationale for what is included, ‘ only a selection of the civilisations that have ever existed, but we hope it will inspire future exploration.’ and a short explanation of archaeology. Next comes a timeline that illustrates the objects featured in the six galleries: Africa, America, Asia, Europe, The Middle East and Oceania.
Gallery 1 includes Southern Africa, Western Africa …

and Ancient Egypt with each culture being given a short overview followed by a key to the artefacts that includes description, cultural context and anthropological significance.
In Gallery 2, America, five civilisations feature: The Olmec, The Maya,

The Aztecs, The Hopewell (I hate to admit my ignorance about this one), and the Pueblo.
Enter Gallery 3 and you’re taken to Ancient Asia – India (the ancient culture I’m most familiar with),

China, Japan and Korea.
Gallery 4, Europe encompasses The Celts, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome …

and The Vikings.
The Middle East is the location for Gallery 5 and here Jo Nelson offers readers five Mesopotamian objects, another five from The Ancient Levant, a frieze from Ancient Persia; and Early Islam has fragments of a woven tapestry, wall painting fragments and an earthenware bowl.

 

The 6^th Gallery, Oceania includes items from the Indigenous Australians,

Melanesia, Polynesia and The Maori.
Wilkinson’s digital illustrations are not photos though they have a considerable degree of photorealism in the detail and some truly stand out from the page.

Moving from early Stone Age (a hand axe) right through to the 19^th century (a Polynesian head of a staff god) is indeed an ambitious enterprise and of course, it can never take the place of a real museum visit; but you would need to visit a great many to see everything Historium presents. There is a final index citing the museums (with locations) of the artefacts displayed in the whole fascinating enterprise. It certainly does give the next best thing: a basic introduction to a number of ancient cultures (mostly no longer in existence) and an exciting visual experience that will one hopes, inspire readers to go (coining a phrase from Bruner), ‘beyond the information given’

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