Wagon, chariot, and carriage : symbol and status in the history of transport /

Piggott (emeritus, Univ. of Edinburgh), famed expert on prehistory, here expands on The Earliest Wheeled Transport (1983) with essays on "pomp and circumstance in. . .transport. . .in antiquity." His usual knowledgeable tour de force on the history of technology is therefore accompanied by careful examination of "the value attached to a new invention within the social setting in which it is contained." So important was the addition of wheels to sledges in Central Asia around 3500 BCE, for example, that by 2000 BCE, rulers had themselves buried in what were once peasant oxcarts. Horse-drawn chariots carried ancient Mideast rulers to victory and to their ancestors. "Equids," especially riding horses, gained yet more status in medieval and early modern times and also caused upscale changes in clothing and carriages. Piggott's erudition can be measured by the title of just one short section, "The Pivoted Front Axle from Prehistory to History." But humor peeks through often, as in the section "The Glamour of Anachronism," in which the description of the 19th-century class war using pretentious carriages precedes this: "On 19 May 1977 the widow of an oil millionaire. . .was buried sitting in her Ferrari motor car in a lace nightgown 'with the seat slanted comfortably'." Piggott's scholarship is monumental. His writing is joyously lucid. And his book is plain fun, especially for students of the interaction between technology and society. General; advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty. T. J. Knight; Colorado State University