Friday, February 26, 2016

If you are really interested in Viking archaeology...

or early medieval Poland, consider this:


Buko, Andrzej, ed. Bodzia. A Late Viking-Age Elite Cemetery in Central Poland. East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. xxxi, 624. $293.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-27829-5.

A lavish and detailed work aimed at a wide audience, published even before the excavation report. But the publishers have narrowed down that audience, as the  reviewer, Neil Price, points out:


However, given such an impressive catalogue of achievement, there sadly remains one truly glaring problem, which is not the fault of editor or contributors: as ever with Brill's otherwise excellent early medieval volumes, this book is priced far beyond the pockets of students, academics or even libraries [SM]. If it really does cost nearly three hundred dollars to viably produce a volume like this, then one wonders if a pdf on Open Access might honestly be a better solution, or at least breaking it up into two or three more affordable paperbacks.

1 comment:

Janice said...

What an awful price point! I sadly stopped recommending Brill books to our acquisitions team a few years back. Most Ashgate titles also don't get a chance with my library budget because of the pricing. When I can get three really good other books for the price of one of their titles, it's a no-brainer not to buy the overpriced works!