Most archaeologists I know have a soft spot for Indiana Jones. They might not admit it. They might grimace at the famous bullwhip and guffaw at all the suspension-bridge antics over crocodile-infested waters. But despite that, or perhaps because of it, Indiana Jones often captures something from a defining moment in their lives. It reminds […]
Three weeks ago, a BBC journalist experienced first hand the random brutality of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces. Chris Cobb-Smith and two colleagues were heading to the town of Zawiya to cover the conflict, when security forces arrested them at a checkpoint and hustled them off to a makeshift prison. There guards repeatedly beat […]
As someone who writes about archaeology, I often consider myself to be in the death business. I’ve grown accustomed to the company of skeletons and mummies, wrapped in their linen bandages, curled fetally under ancient house floors, or splayed in a tangle of bodies in a mass grave. Now, like a mortician, I take a […]
In late February, I had my first experience of worrying from afar about a good friend caught in a catastrophic earthquake. The anxiety started just before six in the evening of February 21st, after I’d knocked off work for the day and idly flipped on the radio to catch some news. I was only half […]
In the year 111 BCE, the emperor of China sent his emissaries westward to the land of the Wusun. The emperor had grown tired of the Central Asian nomads who routinely swept into his villages, stealing the grain, making off with the women and burning the houses. Wudi realized he needed better, faster horses to […]
I love unguarded moments, those brief seconds when someone on stage or in front of a camera finally gives way to nervousness and says or does something completely unplanned and unrehearsed, something that just spills out like a stream overtaking its banks. For a moment, we see something that we weren’t meant to, something revealing, […]
At first glance, the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay doesn’t seem like much of a subject for archaeologists. The controversial camp, built to detain suspected terrorists after the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, seems far too new, far too contemporary for archaeological research. And if that weren’t reason enough to steer clear, Gitmo remains […]
For the last five or six days, I’ve been searching the web for good, reliable news about what is happening to Egypt’s antiquities as the turmoil deepens in Cairo. Are Egyptian artifacts safe in the country’s many museums, protected by soldiers perched on tanks or by human chains of young Egyptians? Or are gangs of […]