Kindred is a "popular" book written by an academic with extensive experience in Neanderthals. It is not as dense as a typical academic work. However, it is not an easy to access as a typical popular work. The writing is a fairly dense recitation of the "state of the art" in ancient hominid research, with small bits of narrative tied in.
Neanderthals lived in "recent" prehistoric times. There is fairly large amount of available fossil records. However, most of the work has been done by making inferences based on the state of the skeletons and the related material. Death rituals and eating habits can be more easily be determined by looking at the bones and those of related animals. However, we are somewhat constrained in dealing with the "well preserved" remains. Are sample may not represent the population as a whole.
Genetic analysis has made for some interesting discoveries. There has been interbreeding between humans and early Neanderthals. However, the later Neanderthals did not appear to mate with humans. There are a number of open questions as to what happened to Neanderthals. Did humans wipe them out? Are they a cautionary tale of what humans can do to each other and those that seem different?
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