One day last week, our dog’s insistent barking (he rarely barks) announced that someone was near the yard. A man with a metal detector came to the door and asked if he could search our yard. He was attracted to our house because it is old. This is the second time this has occurred. Last year, a different man with a metal detector asked if he could search our yard because our house is old.…
This past Friday I had the opportunity to attend the Council for Minnesota Archaeology’s annual conference at St. Cloud State University. A large portion of the conference was dedicated to celebrating the life of famed Minnesota archaeologist Doug Birk. I say “famed” not because Doug would have liked that term … he would have hated it … but because of the awe and regard in which so many of his colleagues, friends, and acquaintances held…
Let’s face it. Even in this age of individuals digitally capturing and sharing the minutiae of daily life, we simply can’t capture and hold all of history in order to replay it later. Even a video camera only records what’s within range of its lens. If you are facing the lens, it’s not picking up your back. Sure, you could put multiple video cameras in a room in hopes of recording everything happening in that…
I recently watched the PBS NOVA documentary “Dawn of Humanity” on Netflix. This almost 2-hour exploration of anthropologists excavating a cache of bones deep in a South African cave was riveting. The bones turned out to be from a previously-unknown species of hominid. Because the cache held the bones of so many individuals, the paleoanthropologists studying the cave surmised it was an intentional burial site. The documentary features Dr. Lee Berger, the lead paleoanthropologist for the…