Brian Fagan is well known for his archaeology books written for a general public as well as his textbooks. This book is a collection of his articles originally published as bimonthly 'Timelines' columns in Archaeol­ogy Magazine. As he states in the preface of the book, his articles were meant to entertain, inform and sometimes wax indignant on a wide variety of archaeological subjects.

His intent was to make available to a wide audience short stories that "navigated through the maze of detailed and specialized literature, creating snapshots of archaeology, archaeologists, and our complex, multifaceted past." The collection of 27 articles he chose for the book were published between 1988 and 1995; in addition, Fagan wrote two new articles for the book (one on prehistoric art and the other on the lives of Egyptian townspeople), for a total 29 articles.