Review of 'Cræft' on Goodreads
3 stars
Naturalistic essays on the deep local knowledge of material and environment that pre-industrial crafts like haymaking, hedgerows, thatch roofing, basketry, etc require. Fascinating walk with an experimental archaeologist through the English past, if there's a larger ethic here (only lightly touched on) it's the disconnect that mechanical fossil energy has given us from the immense amount of (formerly human) power needed cyclically to maintain the most basic aspects of life and comfort, and the ways in which craft knowledge represented efficient adaptations to a world we did not control as absolutely as we unthinkingly do now.