“When most people think of archaeology, they think of fossils and mummies. They picture huge reptiles buried beneath the ground. They imagine great rulers hidden in triangular castles in the sand. As archaeologists, what we do is bigger than that.”
I stood in front of a crowd of fifty professors, professionals, and students in the theater of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Believe it or not, fifty was a stadium-sized crowd in my field. The numerous prescription lenses in the crowd reflected off the bright fluorescent lights. Pencils belonging to the older crowd worked furiously over notepads. The nimble fingers of the younger ones flew over keyboards and handheld devices to capture my jewels of knowledge.
“We’re not just unco
