About the book
Prehistoric human life is a common reference point in contemporary culture, inspiring our attempts to become happier, healthier, or better people. Exploited by capitalism, overwhelmed by technology, and living in the shadow of environmental catastrophe, we call on the prehistoric to escape the present and to model alternative ways of living our lives.
From everyday practices like lighting fires and walking in the woods to our engagements with genetic technologies and Neanderthal DNA, from megaliths and museum mannequins to TV shows and best-selling nonfiction, prehistory is alive in the twenty-first century.
Our popular flights back in time provide a revealing insight into present-day anxieties, obsessions, and concerns. This book explores how ideas about race are tightly woven into the prehistoric imagination, caught up in powerful origin stories about who we are, where we came from, and what we are like.
Back to the Stone Age shows that the human past is not set in stone: by opening up the prehistoric to critical contestation, racial justice becomes central to questions about the existence and persistence of Homo sapiens in the contemporary world.
Buy the book
Back to the Stone Age is published by McGill Queens University Press.
The paperback retails at £29.99/$39.95. Support your local UK independent bookshop by ordering it here.
You might also be able to download a pdf copy from a site like Libgen, Z-library, or Anna's archive.
Media
I introduce some of the book's themes in this talk on 'Prehistory for antifascists' for Stone Club at The Social.
Back to the Stone Age features on the New Books in Critical Theory podcast where I talk with Dave O'Brien about cultural studies and the distant human past.
I also take part in episodes 3 and 4 of Zakia Sewell's BBC Radio 4 series My Albion.
At the Institute of Contemporary Arts for the launch event of Epoch Review #2 with Bones Tan Jones and Hannah Catherine Jones, 31 October 2023.