Drawing on years of travel around Britain’s most extraordinary prehistoric sites, David Abram’s aerial photographs reveal the ancient wonders hiding in plain sight around the country, from Neolithic tombs on the Wessex chalklands to Iron Age crannogs in Hebridean lochs. Breathtaking photos reveal Neolithic enclosures, cairns, and stone circles; Bronze Age villages, farmsteads, tombs, and burial mounds; and Iron Age hillforts, all captured in spectacular bird’s-eye-view detail. Stone cairns and circles evoke lost rituals and religious ceremonies; Iron Age ramparts hint at former strongholds; and tangible geographical clues reveal the scars of real or mythical battles.
The eye-in-the-sky perspective unveils both the unseen forms of these ancestral monuments as well as their relationship to their wider landscapes, capturing subtle symmetries and forgotten sight lines. Many of Abram’s images have an abstract quality that momentarily disrupts one’s sense of perspective, allowing the shapes carved thousands of years ago to evoke an emotional resonance—an experience at once pleasurable and instructive. This is an inspiring way to discover the beauty and history of the British landscape, revealing the visible traces of our ancestors, from such famous monuments as Stonehenge to little-known gems that have never before been seen from the air.
Reviews
Stunning photographs of Great Britain’s ancient sites, from Stonehenge to Cadbury Castle… The aerial images often reveal topographical secrets [and] might read like paintings… Abram shot many of the pictures during the pandemic, when Britain’s empty highways, pastures, and cliffsides were at their most majestic.
— Air Mail
Contributors
David R. Abram
Author
David Abram is a writer and photographer. He has traveled the length and breadth of the British Isles, capturing views and researching his findings. He lives in the southwest of England, near some of the oldest sites of human habitation in the British Isles.
Alice Roberts
Foreword By
Alice Roberts is an academic, author, and broadcaster. She is a professor of public engagement with science at the University of Birmingham, and has presented many television programs, including the BBC's Digging for Britain.
