"When I was going through graduate school at Cambridge it appeared that humanities scholarship, stung by a decade of u…"

"Civilisation as a term suggests human agency. Things don't come together organically."

"There are winners and losers – and human will created the world we live in."

"Civilisation as a term suggests human agency. […] It is the way in which people have articulated how and why they wan…"

"In some respects, cities are bottom-up processes, but they are also top-down initiatives – and elites soon develop. R…"

"Writing certainly develops as an elite initiative at this [ancient] time. It helps them to harness the workforce – it…"

"But archaeology […] often acts as a parallel narrative to history: if you start digging with a textbook in your hand,…"

"The more I thought about it, the more obsessed I became with the idea of a swimming journey. I started to dream ever …"

"From water level, I observed the mating joined in flight like refuelling aircraft, and the random progress of the clo…"

"It is through trees that we see and hear the wind: woodland people can tell the species of a tree from the sound it m…"