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Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age and Roman Britain. By Miranda Aldhouse-Green. Stroud: Tempus, 2001. 224pp. Illus. L25.00 (hbk). ISBN 0-7524-1940-4
This is a timely and elegant volume on a popular and controversial subject. Not so long ago, scholarship was at pains to demonstrate that Iron Age peoples were not given to sacrificing their fellows to appease the gods every time the wind changed. Grunting barbarians seemed likely to give way to proto-Enlightenment philosophes with an interest in science and art who possessed a complex and humanistic culture. Pendulums, alas, never stay still. As mounting evidence suggests that human sacrifice had been practised in the ancient world, hardly a grave is excavated nowadays without someone, usually in a television special, speculating on sacrificial rituals. This makes Professor Aldhouse-Green's sensible study all the more useful in that it combines in one volume a comprehensive review of the material, a scholarly evaluation of the theories, and a number of suggestions about the motivation, function and mindset that surround sacrificial rituals.
The scope of the book encompasses Europe during the...