Lives in Ruins (39 page)

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As for the spelling, the official museum in the Neander Valley in Germany still uses Neanderthal (pronounced Neandertal), and the journal
Evolutionary Anthropology
still spells it the old way, but I spell it the way my teacher does.

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Older sites like the Monte Verde site in Chile (which dates back about 14,800 years) and the Buttermilk Creek Complex in Texas (which dates to approximately 15,500 years ago) have been controversial, but are increasingly accepted by the archaeological community. Older human sites in the Americas are still disputed.

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This laboratory also analyzed the DNA from the little finger that was used to identify another branch of the
Homo
genus, Denisova.

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Once you master the variations of human, you can go for extra credit and study the archaeological version of “cultures,” in which people are named based on the style of artifacts they left. Another reason the Neandertals might be popular is they all have the same culture: Mousterian. (The names are based on where the artifacts are first identified.)
Homo sapiens
have zillions of cultures, for example, Acheulian, Chalcolithic, Natufian, Clovis, Folsom, Oldowan, Jomon. . . .

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Jean Auel has trademarked the phrase “Earth's Children.”

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Auel pronounces it Neandertal and spells it Neanderthal, so I defer to her spelling in the written quote.

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Daryl Hannah starred in the disastrous film based on the first book. Auel was so dismayed she bought back the rights, and no one has made a film about Ayla since.

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There is a profusion of explicit rolling-around-on-furs in the books, though no one, Neandertal or
Homo sapiens
, can figure out how pregnancy begins. “Will you share my furs tonight?” is how the respectful
Homo sapiens
men initiate sex, which is fundamentally about the Mother's Gift of Pleasure—particularly female pleasures—to her people. Sexual relationships are open. Men and women mate and “share a hearth,” but they are free to screw around, especially at festivals and summer meetings. Men introduce their mates' children as “the children of my hearth.” If a child happens to look like them, they say this is “the child of my spirit,” but the child's creation is magic concocted by the great earth mother, not any doing of theirs. Neandertal men, by contrast, are . . . well, a little Neandertal. They make a gesture to “relieve their needs” and a woman is expected to drop to her knees and present herself, baboon style. It is unthinkable for a Neandertal woman to refuse a man's request. Finally, one person makes the connection between sex and procreation. Ayla!

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The managers of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey's discussion board advise members to avoid jargon, though they mean words like “cryoturbation” and “selectionism,” not Pleistocene.

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It was published in London, more sensibly, as
Shanidar: The Humanity of Neanderthal Man
(Allen Lane, 1972).

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He was especially kind in dealing with my ignorance. From the transcript of our first interview: “Shea: You've heard of Omo Kibish? Me: That's the oldest something, right?”

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Since this lecture, Dogfish Head has debuted the following archaeology-inspired brews: Birra Etrusca Bronze from ingredients including pomegranates and Ethiopian myrrh, based on 2,800-year-old residue found in Etruscan tombs; and Sah'tea, a rye-based drink from ninth-century Finland; Nordicthern Europe, with bog myrtle and bog cranberries, a mid–fourth century
B
.
C
. concoction; and Kvasir, from a 3,500-year-old Danish drinking vessel.

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According to archaeologist and scholar Miriam T. Stark, Sarah Milledge Nelson wrote the first key English-language text on archaeology in Korea, and one of four key texts in English on Chinese archaeology. She also taught archaeology at the University of Denver for thirty years (and won its teaching prize).

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In Nelson's
Gender in Archaeology
, she credits archaeologist Alfred Kidder with the dichotomy of hairiness.

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This was Sonny Trimble, who is trying to get funding for military veterans to help sort and preserve these materials.

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Gilmore's Twitter handle is @Dig_or_Die.

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The Public Record Office in London is now known as the National Archives.

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According to the Captain Cook Society website, Cook was not eaten by Hawaiians, only boiled to retrieve his bones.

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Connelly also appeared as an expert in the History Channel's
Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed
, as well as in
Secrets of the Parthenon
, from Nova and PBS.

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The dig team's computers and databases are kept on shore in Agios Georgios.

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As with most field schools that students can take for college credit, most of the cost goes toward tuition, in this case, about $5,000 for NYU credits and about $2,000 for room and board.

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Among its extensive holdings in Cyprus, the Orthodox Church owns the land on which the apotheke sits; the Cyprus Department of Antiquities owns the building.

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The Hudson River was then known as the North River.

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From Greenhouse Consultants Inc., Stage1B Archaeological Survey of the Touchdown Development, Town of Fishkill, Dutchess Co., NY, Prepared for Battoglia Lanza Architectural Group. P. C. July, 1998.

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I was told this by the first archaeologist I interviewed. “Have you heard of NAGPRA?” she said. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was a belated effort to stop archaeologists and museums from collecting and displaying sacred relics, particularly the skeletal remains, of tribal people. “You've heard of Kennewick Man?” she said. “That was a nightmare for everyone involved.” The remains of the 9,000-year-old skeleton, found in Washington state, were in legal limbo for nine years, with both scientists and Native Americans suing for its custody. Federal courts ultimately ruled that Kennewick Man was not Native American, but though archaeologists have since studied the remains of one of the oldest skeletons ever found, it was a Pyrrhic victory. The bones are now under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, held away from public view in the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, visited by both scientists and Native Americans who have not abandoned their claim.

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The GSA's account of the excavations are available at http://www.gsa.gov/portal/ext/html/site/hb/category/25431/actionParameter/exploreByBuilding/buildingId/1084. The New York Preservation Archive Project's account of it appears at http://www.nypap.org/content/african-burial-ground. That account states: “Although the HCI [Rutsch's firm] found a 1755 map that showed an African Burial Ground two blocks north of City Hall, archaeologists reasoned that 19th and 20th century development would have destroyed any remains.” This was
not
Rutsch's conclusion.

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Mara Farrell is the local organizer who was involved in early efforts to preserve the site.

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All provinces, according to Parks Canada, except Ontario and Quebec.

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Friends of the Fishkill Supply Depot website: http://www.fishkillsupplydepot.org/

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Press release by Greg Lane, Snook-9 Realty, Inc., May 6, 2013.

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Forensic Archaeological Recovery (FAR) was organized in response to the WTC attacks. A nonprofit, volunteer organization, it has dispatched forensic archaeologists in the wake of fires, plane crashes, and hurricanes.

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Moran said she could not have pulled off this simulation without the help of her colleague Al Stewart, who was instrumental, among other things, in obtaining a bus that could be blown up.

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One of these acronyms is IMCuRWG, for International Military Cultural Resources Working Group; another, CCHAG, is an acronym for COCOM Cultural Heritage Action Group, in which COCOM is an acronym for COmbatant COMmand.

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CHAMP removed its embedded acronym in 2014 and became the Cultural Heritage by Archaeology and Military Panel. The parallel group for the Society for American Archaeology, which features some overlap in participants, is called MARS, for Military Archaeological Resources Stewardship.

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The Marines cared, too; Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, author of
Thieves of Baghdad
, about the hunt for antiquities after the attack on the National Museum of Iraq, was part of the group, but couldn't attend this meeting.

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Bogdanos, who led the Special Forces investigation into the looting, does a fine job of re-creating those days, and dismantling the early press reports, in
Thieves of Baghdad
. The museum was on the no-strike list, but he points out that in being used as a machine-gun position by the Iraqi Republican Guard, it lost its protected status; and in fact he claims General Tommy Franks used admirable restraint in not demolishing the museum after it became cover for gunfire.

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Blue Shield's symbol, a blue triangle atop a blue diamond, is one devised after The Hague Convention, and is used to identify important cultural heritage sites throughout the world.

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McGuire Gibson is the name of that professor at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.

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Jaime Pursuit is the partnership and development manager of CyArk, the nonprofit organization working on capturing at-risk cultural heritage sites with laser scans. See their fascinating website at www.cyark.org.

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Rush's team also found an eight-thousand-year-old hearth beneath the seventeenth-century trading post.

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The Afghanistan heritage playing cards are each stamped with the motto “ROE First!” (ROE stands for “rules of engagement,” which state, in short, that a soldier has the right to defend him- or herself.)

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ICAHM advises the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the World Heritage Committee about archaeology and heritage.

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Not to be confused, in the Googling, with the stock car racers of NASCAR or the swingers of NASCA International, a sex club.

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I've read von Däniken's
Chariots of the Gods
, and I've read Silverman and Donald A. Proulx's
The Nasca
, and the Nasca people were far wilder and more interesting than any ancient astronauts. And after reading von Däniken's take on the Mayan calendar—and other advances from so-called “primitive” people—it seems his motive was essentially racist.

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The story of the displacing of the Café Ayllu by the landowner, the local archbishop, is a heartbreaking one, detailed at http://www.cuzcoeats.com/2011/07/cafe-ayllu/; and at http://www.cafeayllu.com/Cafe_Ayllu_1/cafe_ayllu.html.

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Another finding intrigued me: after the team took the engine apart, they dusted it for fingerprints and found none. Archival research turned up the fact that the van had been one of the first turned out in a fully robotized factory. Schofield's talk, and the field of contemporary archaeology, remind me of the pioneering archivist Howard Gotlieb, who instead of waiting till his subjects were old and had gone through their files, would sign them up while they were relatively young and have them sweep their desks each week and send him the scraps and papers.

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Moseley's lecture, “Four Thousand Years Ago in Coastal Peru,” can be heard at https://peabody.Harvard.edu/node/581.