"Antiquaries and Archaists, a collection of essays based on a conference held at the Society of Antiquaries in the year of its 300th anniversary, triumphantly demonstrates the value of the kind of antiquarianism which takes the past seriously, even where it cannot take it literally. The work of a group of historians, archaeologists, sociologists and art historians, the conference had its origin in “a series of conversations held in several pubs”, followed by an interdisciplinary outing to inspect the White Horse at Uffington. The resulting papers range over time and space from Wiltshire to Beijing and from the early Middle Ages to the latest pagan goings-on at Glastonbury, sweeping with similar freedom across the boundaries of academic disciplines. Within its broadly chronological sequence the book describes not the conventional upward curve towards modern scientific materialism, but rather a wave pattern in our relations with the past of “enchantment, disenchantment and re-enchantment”." - William Harryman from Bookmarklet