Dr Jim Leary is an archaeologist at the University of York and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He has directed major excavations across Britain, including Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, the largest Neolithic monument in Europe. A passionate walker, much of his research is centred on the way people moved around in the past.
A gentle, personal and very readable book that gives life to the dynamic sequence of activity, effort and extraordinary determination that makes up our human past -- Julia Blackburn, author of Time Song Archaeologists have a superpower: time travel. Their digs show us cold hearths and colder graves, but as Jim Leary shows in this gripping read, the past was hot-blooded and alive with the movement of people who loved and laughed as we do. Yet history and archaeology are written as though humans and our creations are fixed, frozen entities: screenshots of past lives, not videos. Our ideas of our origins, history and ourselves today must all change, and those new ideas are not only more exciting, but tell us more about both our past and our future. They are also true -- John Harrison, award winning travel writer A book about the movements of humans could be a little dull, don't you think? Well, not a bit of it. Jim Leary's archaeological passion is paths over pyramids and Footmarks is as lively and entertaining an exploration of human wanderings as you could ever hope to read. It links our colourful and complex history to how we live today, clearing up a few notable misconceptions along the way. This compelling, highly original book will change the way you think about landscape and our place within it -- Ian Carter, author of Human, Nature