Kartki z dziejów igołomskiego powiśla

„Cards from the history of Igołomia region on the Vistula River” is a monumental, richly illustrated collective work devoted to the history of a patch of Małopolska (Lesser Poland; S Poland) located north-east of Kraków, in the Western Lesser Poland Loess Upland. This area is known to archaeologists for years as a kind of Eldorado, inhabited by subsequent human groups, ranging from Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, through the shepherds of the Corded Ware culture, to the creators of the Igołomia-Zofipole wheel-trown pottery production center in the late Roman period. It played a significant role also in historical times, thanks to its location in the foreground of the capital of Małopolska. The monograph edited by Dr. Krzysztof Tunia, an archaeologist who has devoted most of his professional career to researching this region, reflects the current state of research on the prehistory and history of this part of the Vistula river. The advantage of the publication is the fact that the individual chapters come „first hand”: from the researchers who have conducted excavations, historical queries or anthropological studies here, and today synthesize their results in a form accessible to a wide audience. The reading is accompanied by the thought of longue durée – it is inevitable, in fact, when in one book one reads about the subsistence strategies of the first farmers from the 6th millennium BC, the innovations of their Slavic successors from the 6th century AD, the bias of local peasants toward the January Uprising or the attitude of the rural population in the face of the atrocities of the Holocaust…