In the original dustsheet. Navy cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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• ‘Lucid, poetic and fascinating’ ALICE ROBERTS

• ‘Engaging, authoritative and full of fascinating stories of the past’ RAY MEARS

• ‘A gentle, personal and very readable book’ JULIA BLACKBURN AUTHOR OF TIME SONG

• ‘A triumph!’ JAMES CANTON, AUTHOR OF THE OAK PAPERS

• ‘I loved this book’ FRANCIS PRYOR

On paths, roads, seas, in the air, and in space – there has never been so much human movement. In contrast we think of the past as static, ‘frozen in time’. But archaeologists have in fact always found evidence for humanity’s irrepressible restlessness. Now, latest developments in science and archaeology are transforming this evidence and overturning how we understand the past movement of humankind. In this book, archaeologist Jim Leary traces the past 3.5 million years to reveal how people have always been moving, how travel has historically been enforced (or prohibited) by people with power, and how our forebears showed incredible bravery and ingenuity to journey across continents and oceans. With Leary to show the way, you’ll follow the footsteps of early hunter-gatherers preserved in mud, and tread ancient trackways hollowed by feet over time. Passing drovers, wayfarers and pilgrims, you’ll see who got to move, and how people moved. And you’ll go on long-distance journeys and migrations to see how movement has shaped our world.

Review: This is a gorgeous, funny, beautifully-written, and carefully-researched book. The past is often presented as static, but as Leary sets out, life has always been played out through movement. Ranging from 3.5 million years ago to the modern day, Footmarks highlights different aspects of mobile life and human movement. It brings together a broad range of evidence from different archaeological sites and of varying scales – from small-scale footprints to large-scale migrations revealed by ancient DNA, and through this shows that social life happened on the road, while people were on their daily, monthly, yearly rounds, on the hoof, and not in places. It shows that movement has always been both freedom and constraint, and that paths and routeways are not just important, but essential, monuments in the landscape. Importantly, it emphasises that migration has always been a part of the human condition.

This book is such a compelling, enjoyable read, leaping from one story to the next at a perfect pace. It changed the way I think about the past, bringing it to life in a way for me that no other archaeology or history book has done before. The author’s passion for the subject is present on every page, so that it is also a wonderful love-letter to archaeology.

Dr Jim Leary is an archaeologist at the University of York and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He has directed major excavations across Britain, including Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, the largest Neolithic monument in Europe. A passionate walker, much of his research is centred on the way people moved around in the past.