From Stonehenge to Samarkand: An Anthology of Archaeological Travel Writing.(Brief article)(Book review)

From Stonehenge to Samarkand: An Anthology of Archaeological Travel Writing BRIAN FAGAN. Oxford Univ., $35 (384p) ISBN 0-19-516091-6

The archeology gets in the way of the writing in this uneven collection. People have been going to stare at ruins for a long time; anthropologist Fagan (The Oxford Companion to Archaeology) excerpts Herodotus and 21st-century travel writer Tom Bissell but concentrates on the great age of European exploration from the 16th to the mid-20th centuries. These pieces have a certain pattern: excitement over the discovery of a fabled ruin; dutiful pacing off of dimensions; awe at the monumental scale mixed with lugubrious reflection on the …