A review by ceallaighsbooks
Café Neandertal: Excavating Our Past in One of Europe's Most Ancient Places by Beebe Bahrami

adventurous informative lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

4.75

“That's when I realized we all existed in a special place, one I called Café Neandertal. The mixed objectivity and subjectivity of these natives—archaeologists and locals alike—turns out to contain in a microcosm a whole lot about what it is to be human. We think, we perceive, we feel things about others, whether they lived now or half a million years ago. It also reveals the workings of that mystery box between our ears, one guided as much by genes as by natural selection, the environment, and perception.”

TITLE—Café Neandertal
AUTHOR—Beebe Bahrami
PUBLISHED—2017
PUBLISHER—Counterpoint Press

GENRE—literary nonfiction
SETTING—southwestern France: Paleolithic eras
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—archaeology, Neandertal history, Paleolithic eras, European history, innovative field work technology, what does it mean to be “human”?, southwest France travel writing, human philosophy, lots of anecdotes, meticulously researched

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️
CHARACTERIZATION of subjects—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️
STORY/FLOW—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️
PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (see chapter 2)
EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—Just the fact that this book was set for the most part in SW France was so fun. It made me want to book a trip immediately! 😂 You can definitely tell Bahrami is mainly a travel writer.

“…life in the past looked more like what we know life to be: dynamic, changing, full of options and choices that never quite represent a whole culture in one slice of time, certainly not in one set of tools. Process was now in the picture and people who liked nice neat stories had to get used to the fact that their photograph of the past was really a single frame in a movie.”

My thoughts:
Another fantastic #ArchaeoBookclub pick! I actually read the whole thing! 😆

Bahrami’s treatment of the material overall (her thorough research and the way she connected all the elements she was working with together to create a very cohesive big picture), her deep philosophical insights & musings, and how thoughtful and critical she was about all the different perspectives that play a roll in our understanding both of Neandertals and modern humans really impressed me.

I found this entire book wholly fascinating and never for one second considered DNFing—it was practically a 5-⭐️ in spite of the few criticisms I did have:

1) The writing style actually would have been an easy five stars for me in spite of the big EAT PRAY LOVE vibes—I actually kind of liked that style for this book—but the boomerisms were so so bad at times. Almost all of the like jokey bits were sooo cringeee 😬 and there was a lot of cis-/hetero-/allosexual-normativity, some western cultural & philosophical ethnocentrism, and a LOT of ableist language.

2) The characterization of all of her subjects was also really vivid and insightful but there was some doe-eyed hero-worship of the male archaeologists and somewhat condescending fawning over the female characters that were kind of off-putting at times but… it was arguably short of being fully problematic… arguably. In some places it was actually kind of endearing, so…

A few other things to note: the pace definitely slows down in the second half when she starts to get into some of the more intricate data (but those were some of the parts that I found the most interesting so I personally enjoyed them), and the deeper philosophy got a little bit muddy in chapter 10 especially.

“‘All we really have of them are their stone tools and some fossils. That's not enough to build a whole story on, but it is enough to show they were successful, highly intelligent, and best of all, lived with the incredible knowledge about the world around them and did not alter it.’ [—Didier] That's actually saying a lot. How many of us can say these things about ourselves?”

I would recommend this book to readers who are interested in paleo-archaeology/-anthropology/-history. This book is best read on vacation in the SW of France! 🇫🇷🥐🥂

Final note: As far as accessible archaeology books go this one was one of the better ones I’ve read—if you’re ok with quite a few personal, travel, and philosophical tangents, which, I always am. 🤣 I’m actually really tempted to check out more of Bahrami’s travel writing in spite of the issues I had with this book.

“Add a "maybe" to everything in this field, and also, don't let the ink dry.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

CW // HP reference (p 17), quite a bit of ableist language—esp. in ch. 10 😰 (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • more archaeology books!
  • our next Archaeo Bookclub pick: RIVER KINGS by Cat Jarman
  • Nancy Marie Brown
  • Alice Roberts—TBR
  • CAFÉ OC: A NOMAD’S TALES OF MAGIC, MYSTERY, AND FINDING HOME IN THE DORDOGNE OF SOUTHWESTERN FRANCE by Beebe Bahrami—TBR
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