A Bohemian paradise

Extract

It is true that in Europe when it comes to writing broad-based surveys of their archaeology some countries have been more equal than others. The United Kingdom and Ireland probably hold the record, closely followed by the Low Countries. The Czechs also have a long tradition of publishing surveys in one or other of the major European languages, commencing with three slender but well-illustrated volumes with texts in French by the prehistorian Albín Stocký (1924, 1928, 1933). Then in 1961 appeared Czechoslovakia before the Slavs (Neustupný 1961), the English edition of the overview written by the father and son team of Evžen and Jiří Neustupný and published in the previous year (Neustupný & Neustupný 1960). In 1978 appeared a massive single-volume prehistory of Bohemia with a brief summary and captions to the illustrations in German (Pleiner & Rybová 1978). Most recently, from 2007 to 2008 the eight volumes of Archeologie pravěkých Čech appeared—and then disappeared; in a matter of months the entire print run had been sold.