ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS of NORTH AMERICA (The Great Courses) by Edwin Barnhart

 



Published in 2018 by The Great Courses.
Lectures by Edwin Barnhart.
Duration: 12 hours, 19 minutes.
Unabridged.

The idea behind The Great Courses is a simple one - take a college lecture course given by an expert that knows how to give an interesting lecture and package it up as an audiobook that anyone can listen to.

Edwin Barnhart is an archaeologist working out of University of Texas - Austin. This course is the completion of a trilogy of courses on Native American civilizations (South America, Mesoamerica, North America). Barnhart's area of true expertise is Mesoamerica, but he has a wealth of practical experience on digs throughout the Southwest. He also clear has a love for the various mound builder civilizations that arose in North America. 

Barnhart takes both chronological and regional approach to this history. The early history section generally is chronological because it is the most unclear. It is also the most technical section of the book, with long discussions of the pros and cons of various techniques to date artifacts. This part was pretty dry, to be honest.

 Monks Mound at Cahokia, easily the largest mound in North
America and one of the larger pyramids in the world.
The rest of the book moves from one region of the country to the next looking at the distinctive features and accomplishments of the various peoples. That part was very interesting to me. I have been to a few of them (most recently, Cahokia) and took a few notes of some great sites that I had never heard of. 

This is my fourth or fifth Great Courses audiobook. It was the first one where I felt that the presenter was actually presenting for a video course rather than an audio course. I kept thinking that I was missing some slides or visual aides as he was speaking. Turns out, this course is also available on DVD and streaming video. I enjoyed the audio presentation, but it might be better as a video. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS of NORTH AMERICA (The Great Courses) by Edwin Barnhart.

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