(10) STONE AGE HERBALIST –

ESSAYS IN DISSIDENT ANTHROPOLOGY:

BERSERKERS, CANNIBALS & SHAMANS / SKULL CULTS & CORPSE BRIDES

(2022-2023)

 

“Good anthropology should frighten and disturb”.

Well, I don’t know about frighten and disturb – but certainly titillate!

I mean – don’t the titles alone pique your curiosity? Berserkers, cannibals, and shamans? Skull cults and corpse brides? The latter conjures images of some fantasy world of necromancy – indeed, I often imagine the Herbalist writing such a world, until of course you realise he is writing about our world, just the strange dark fantasy corners of it.

And that really is the heart of that dissident anthropology tagline, albeit it is a catchy tagline (along with that of his pen name) – writing about the dark fantasy corners of our world, which all too often are swept under modern anthropology’s rug of propriety. There was a time, at least it seems to me, when anthropologists positively delighted in shining a light on those dark fantasy corners of the world or crooked timbers of humanity. I can imagine a straight line from the Herbalist back to anthropologists like Sir James George Frazer, fossicking for sympathetic magic and sacrificial kings. Or back to Herodotus for that matter.

The other aspect of his dissident anthropology is when he turns up findings that throw a spanner in the works of modern anthropology – or turns a critical eye to those sacred cows enshrined within it, particularly those that project contemporary political or social fashions to the past (or beyond the West).

Full disclosure – Stone Age Herbalist is a mutual on the X formerly known as Twitter (under @Paracelsus1092), because he was nice enough to follow me back when I started following his account as it posted about exactly the sort of thing you find in these essays. Indeed, I think the only reason I have anyone following or reading my account is from him boosting or sharing the occasional post of mine.

And I meant what I said that his account is essentially the same sort of thing you find in these books. Many of the essays originated as posts or threads on his timeline – and as a drafting board for the essays he writes on his Substack, from which these books are predominantly compiled.

And of course he also earns my usual wildcard tenth place for the best entry from the current or previous year – in this case his second book of essays in 2023, although hopefully we’ll see a third…

The only thing I can’t quite get a fix on is his formal academic discipline, given that subtitle of essays in dissident anthropology (and that mostly seems to me as his subject matter), yet his Amazon author description is that “Stone Age Herbalist is an archaeologist and writer”. Of course the writer part is obvious, but I tend to think that he is truly cross-disciplinary between archaeology and anthropology. Or perhaps some academic Schrodinger’s cat in a quantum state between them – or an academic Renaissance man, a credit to his range and versatility as writer.

As for the contents of the books, I’ll just quote from their Amazon blurbs because they’re fun.

“How many children are ritually sacrificed in Uganda each year? Why does China have such a long history of cannibalism? Do modern soldiers still go berserk like the Vikings of old? In this essay collection, Stone Age Herbalist ranges across a number of uncomfortable topics, from Mongolian eco-fascists to contemporary child witchcraft murders in Britain, the philosophy of Aztec violence and the biological impacts of famines on populations…you will discover the prehistory of whaling, seafaring, the horror of deep time, indigenous warfare, the genius of shamanism, English melancholy, the mysteries of palaeolithic Australia and much more.”

“Stone Age Herbalist returns with over twenty new essays, covering everything from prehistoric skull cults in Anatolia to contemporary corpse brides in China…dogs which defy Darwinism, 21st century concentration camps for witches, murder victims mummified and sold as precious artefacts, forgotten genocides and modern child sacrifice. Alongside the darkness there is also wonder, the origins of metallurgy, Dionysian rewilding, lost tribes and times when farmers abandoned agriculture for hunting and much more.”

See what I mean about imagining the Herbalist writing fantasy? The “horror of deep time” just conjures up eldritch visions of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)