Travelling for pleasure, whether for curiosity, nostalgia, religious convic-
tion, or simply to satisfy an inherent need to learn, has been an essential
part of the human condition for centuries. Chaucer's ' Wife of Bath' ranged
wide, visiting Jerusalem three times as well as Santiago de Compostela,
Rome, Cologne, and Boulogne. Her motivation, like that of so many
medieval travellers, was primarily to visit holy places. Later, as the Grand
Tour took a hold in the eighteenth century, piety was replaced by the need
felt by the élite to educate its young, to compensate for the disgracefully
inadequate training offered at that time by Oxford and Cambridge. The
levelling effect of the Napoleonic Wars changed all that and in the age of
the steamship and the railway mass tourism was born when Mr Thomas
Cook first offered 'A Great Circular Tour of the Continent'.

There have been guidebooks as long as there have been travellers.
Though not intended as such, the Histories of Herodotus would have been
an indispensable companion to a wandering Greek. Centuries later
Pausanias' guide to the monuments of Greece was widely used by travel-
ling Romans intent on discovering the roots of their civilization. In the
eighteenth century travel books took on a more practical form offering a
torrent of useful advice, from dealing with recalcitrant foreign innkeepers
to taking a plentiful supply of oil of lavender to ward off bedbugs. But it
was the incomparable 'Baedekers' that gave enlightenment and reassur-
ance to the increasing tide of enquiring tourists who flooded the
Continent in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The battered but
much-treasured red volumes may still sometimes be seen in use today,
pored over on sites by those nostalgic for the gentle art of travel.

The needs and expectations of the enquiring traveller change rapidly
and it would be impossible to meet them all within the compass of single
volumes. With this in mind, the Oxford Archaeological Guides have been
created to satisfy a particular and growing interest. Each volume provides
lively and informed descriptions of a wide selection of archaeological sites
chosen to display the cultural heritage of the country in question. Plans,
designed to match the text, make it easy to grasp the full extent of the site
while focusing on its essential aspects. The emphasis is, necessarily, on
seeing, understanding, and above all enjoying the particular place. But
archaeological sites are the creation of history and can only be fully appre-
ciated against the longue durée of human achievement. To provide this,
each book begins with a wide-ranging historical overview introducing the
changing cultures of the country and the landscapes which formed them.
Thus, while the Guides are primarily intended for the traveller they can be
read with equal value at home.

Barry Cunliffe

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