This post ran back in 2018 and digging it up was another act unearthing oneself, something I end up doing when rummaging in my car, when I clean my desk. Our own lives are archaeology. Put a trowel in your hand and go through your past. Bounce ground penetrating radar through your heart. See what […]
Archaeology
A recent email from a stranger posed a query as to what to do with Native American artifacts in her possession. I’ve never found the answer to be an easy one. The woman didn’t take much. She called it, “a small box of artifacts, a few really nice perfect arrows and a couple that where truly made […]
Last year, I abandoned a story. It happens, journalists don’t write every story they think they might. But this one I still think about. It started innocuously enough. A paper caught my eye about looting and archaeology. The premise was somewhat counterintuitive: the author argued that in places where the economic situation was particularly dire, […]
“What happened to Franklin is, in its way, a trivial question. He had a wooden ship in the Arctic and no idea what he was doing – what do you mean, what happened to him? But we still ask why. “ – Adam Gopnik, Winter (2011) As of a week ago, we have an […]
If you were one of the 14 (a made-up number) people who read this back when LWON was publishing wonderful posts but was otherwise just a baby staggering around on inept little feet, we apologize for repeating ourselves. Anyway, you probably weren’t. One of the 14. Several superb posts on one of my favorite […]
Heather posted this on July 16, 2010, a time when we had probably 13 readers so apologies to all 13. She’s referring to a post Ann wrote about being dead wrong about some science. She also testifies to the physically horrifying life of an archeology writer. Yesterday, my colleague Ann Finkbeiner fessed up to one […]
“Is it the mummies?” Tom asked. When I confessed my fear of archaeology to the LWON crew, Thomas Hayden immediately blamed the undead. Or long dead. Which was quite reasonable, really. But I’m a lapsed biologist; I like decay. I like a lot of other things about archaeology, too. I like its stories about people […]
This post was originally posted on 8/12/2010, so probably not everybody’s already read it and it’s really nice. I (Ann speaking) love Heather’s first story here, and I love her second one. I love the idea of people saying, “Come warm yourself by our fire.” Last summer, while roaming around Ecuador on a magazine […]