When the Land Was Young: Reflections on American Archaeology

by Sharman Apt Russell

Overview

An award-winning science and nature writer “presents a lively, confident, and free-flowing history of archaeology in America” (Booklist).

Digging up the relics of the past is not without controversy. With insight and eloquence, Sharman Apt Russell reveals here that when it comes to archaeological study, there is more than one way to examine history.

Raising provocative questions anew about subjects such as the role of humans in the extinction of the large land mammals of the Pleistocene epoch and the repatriation of Native American graves, Russell, winner of the John Burroughs Medal—whose recipients include Rachel Carson—explores the question of what we owe to our past. Through a series of interviews with archaeologists and activists who have helped modernize the field, Russell provides fascinating ideas about the role of archaeology in the stewardship of antiquity, as well as the implications for our common future.

“Russell’s work is thoughtful, beautifully written, and well documented. A good way for lay readers to become more informed.” —Library Journal 

“Agile, cerebral, ruminative, entirely satisfying.” —Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504079365
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Publication date:	12/06/2022
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Sharman Apt Russell was awarded the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, whose other recipients include Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Roger Tory Peterson. Her works include the award-winning young adult historical fantasy Teresa of the New World, set in the dreamscape of the sixteenth-century American Southwest, and Knocking on Heaven’s Door, which takes place in a science fiction Paleoterrific future. Her nonfiction ranges from Diary of a Citizen Scientist to Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist. Sharman is a professor emerita at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico, and affiliate faculty at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She lives with her husband in the Gila Valley of southwestern New Mexico.
 

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xiii
	House of Mirrors	1
	Emotional Baggage	19
	Clovisia the Beautiful	39
	Women's Work	65
	Countdown	85
	Bright Lights, Big City	115
	First Contact	135
	A Good Wish	159
	In Our Grandmother's House	187
	Eagle's Nest	203
	Notes	209
	Index	221

Editorial Reviews

At one time, American archeologists were insensitive, racist and sexist, says the author. Only after WWII did they begin to explore social behavior, settlement patterns and site ecology, showing an interest in living people in order to understand the past. Russell (Kill the Cowboy) finds this shift in perspective the most significant change in the field. Her lively conversations with present-day archeologists present a wide range of opinions on such topics as earliest settlement, mammalian extinction and feminist views of archeology. Russell discusses the American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which enabled Indian skeletons and sacred artifacts to be returned to their tribes. Finally, Russell describes cultural resource management, a program for historical preservation. She offers an exciting portrait of archeology today. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Russell (Kill the Cowboy: A Battle of Mythology in the New West, LJ 5/15/93) moves from personal observations of petroglyphs near her home in southwestern New Mexico to a consideration of various issues in American archaeology today, based on her travels to sites and interviews with specialists in the field. What is most appealing about her book is her ability to convey a sense of immediacy as well as awe at the presence of the past at historic sites: "Holding my sherd, I feel the substance of time, a place I can travel to while standing still. I heft its weight. This moment is a thousand years ago and a thousand years ago is this moment." Excellent, too, is Russell's presentation of the shift that has occurred with the 1990 passage of a law that gives Native Americans the right to reappropriate skeletal remains and sacred artifacts, the impact of more Native Americans entering archaeology as a profession, and the urgent need for archaeologists to work out a relationship with Native American leaders who are opposed to excavations of their cultural sites. Russell's work is thoughtful, beautifully written, and well documented. A good way for lay readers to become more informed.-Joan W. Gartland, Detroit P.L.

Library Journal

Reprint of a 1996 history of archaeology in America that takes the study of the nation's ancestors out of the museum and shows the immediate, human implications of forays into the past. Russell, author of , focuses on the idea that there are multiple ways of examining the past. She interviews an array of characters who have been instrumental in reshaping modern archaeology and speaks to those who continue to wrestle with the nature of the field today. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

A leisurely, recondite crawl through various conundrums besetting today's archaeologists, elegantly handled by one of their own.

Russell (Kill the Cowboy, 1993, etc.) loves archaeology, "the tale of our first awkward relationship, the wrestling match of humans and the natural world," and when she stumbles across a sherd of Mogollon plainware, a fragment of Mimbres pottery, a 3,000-year-old piece of cordage, she feels the thrill of time travel, of making a distant connection. Then she replaces the relic where she found it; that little piece of history needs, she believes, to remain in situ, so that others in the future may feel the weight of its place and context—museums won't do, nor will the mantlepieces of deep-pocketed collectors. The notion of "context" pervades this book. What does it mean to take artifacts from their location? Who do they belong to? What do they lose by being separated from their site? And, as much of the book has to do with the remains of Native American cultures in the southwestern US, what are the specific questions of accountability archaeologists should consider when they dig up a grave site in that region? The remains of the people uncovered are, the Zunis believe, still sentient, still voyaging, seeking their next stage. The repatriation of native remains is only one of Russell's concerns. Her thoughts dance every which way: She explores the problems of "geofacts" and the foibles of quick diagnosis, the pleasures of cave archaeology and paleofecal specimens, ancient roadways and their heavenly orientation, the cultural and ideological baggage that archaeologists bring to their profession. All of this is presented with wonderful facility, a kind of dreamily dilettanish innocence, making these rather rarified concerns the stuff of everday life.

Agile, cerebral, ruminative, entirely satisfying.

Kirkus Reviews

"[Russell] presents a lively, confident, and free-flowing history of archaeology in America. Imaginatively journalistic, Russell offers vivid portraits of archeologists, then turns their theories. . . into dramatic, even visionary scenarios. . . . Russell explains both sides of a number of intriguing controversies and describes various sites across the country, including earthworks in Ohio and Illinois, with keen interpretative finesse."—Booklist

Booklist