Top 5 Archaeology Reads for the Quarentine
For several years, we've hosted a Summer Archaeology Book Club focused on reading and discussing books on archaeology and Florida history written for a popular audience. AKA, fun summer reads that may make you think a little, but lack the rigor of an academic publication. I thought I'd share some of my top recommendations from our book list for everyone to enjoy while staying home and keeping safe!
In an effort to help support local business, I've include links to purchase the books from websites that help support local bookstores where possible. You can also check to see if your library has these books in their online apps. For instance, my local library, the St. Johns County Public Library System, has several of these books available to download and read as ebooks on Libby by Overdrive and Hoopla.
5) 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
Okay - I know I'm cheating already! But these two books do pair nicely together! Charles Mann takes a look at the world before and after Europeans linked it all together. In 1491, he explores ideas of demographics, political complexity and technology to argue that things we pretty happening in the Americas before those bumbling Europeans showed up. In the sequel 1493, Mann explores globalization from it's colonial routes, discussing the spread of ideas, food, technology, disease and more. These books offer some interesting thoughts on how our world has become so connected.
4) A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
Tony Horwitz takes us along for a ride to the places where the old world first stepped ashore the new. He visits Viking settlements, early British colonies, and even earlier Spanish routes and colonies. Part history book, part travel writing, his book is ultimately a meditation on what we choose to remember, what stories we make from the past, and how we choose to commemorate it all. Great book to get you out of the house to some while you can't leave!
3) Killing Mister Watson, Book 1 of the Shadow Country trilogy by Peters Mattheissen
So this book doesn't have too much archaeology to it, but I love it for it's take on Florida's past. Long before air conditioning and Walt Disney, Florida was a wild frontier - and often, a place that people went to disappear. In Killing Mister Watson, Peter Mattheissen takes on the true story of Edgar J. Watson, a man with a questionable past who moves to the Ten Thousand Islands and is soon accused of murder and shot dead by almost everyone in town. This book raised some interesting questions during our book club: Was he really a murderer? Or was he just envied by everyone in town because of his success? Where did he really come from and are those stories about his past true? What does this tell us about small town politics, and human nature? And my biggest question, after having visited his old homestead in Everglades National Park, how did people manage to live down there back then with all those mosquitoes?!?!
Full disclosure: I've only read the first book in the trilogy, but the other two, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone, are currently in my stack of quarantine reads.
2) Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson
This tell-all exposé gives the true and glamorous story of real archaeologists! The mystery and intrigue, the (sometimes) adventurous working conditions, the political fights to save sites, the low paychecks and scare jobs! Marilyn Johnson gives some witty insights into what archaeology really is, and her take on why some of us are driven to it. She takes us all around the world with a great cast of real archaeologists to learn about their research, both the good and the bad, and really does paint a pretty good picture of our live in ruins.
(I also recommend her book on obituary writers, The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiff, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries)
1) Tatham Mound by Piers Anthony
This is one of my favorite books in general! Piers Anthony got involved with the excavations of Tatham Mound in Citrus County back in the 1980s, originally through his children's interest in archaeology and eventually funding part of the project. (The kid lost interest but he hung in there!) Anthony creates an imaginative story of the people buried a the site, a multicomponent burial mound used before and after contact with De Soto. The book is very well researched but also brings elements of magical realism and speculative history to create a wonderful tale of adventure, change, loss and love.
(You can also check out Tatham Mound and the Bioarchaeology of European Contact: Disease and Depopulation in Central Gulf Coast Florida by Dale L. Hutchinson for the more academic version of the story.)
Words and image by Emily Jane Murray, book covers from Amazon.
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5) 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
Okay - I know I'm cheating already! But these two books do pair nicely together! Charles Mann takes a look at the world before and after Europeans linked it all together. In 1491, he explores ideas of demographics, political complexity and technology to argue that things we pretty happening in the Americas before those bumbling Europeans showed up. In the sequel 1493, Mann explores globalization from it's colonial routes, discussing the spread of ideas, food, technology, disease and more. These books offer some interesting thoughts on how our world has become so connected.
4) A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
Tony Horwitz takes us along for a ride to the places where the old world first stepped ashore the new. He visits Viking settlements, early British colonies, and even earlier Spanish routes and colonies. Part history book, part travel writing, his book is ultimately a meditation on what we choose to remember, what stories we make from the past, and how we choose to commemorate it all. Great book to get you out of the house to some while you can't leave!
3) Killing Mister Watson, Book 1 of the Shadow Country trilogy by Peters Mattheissen
So this book doesn't have too much archaeology to it, but I love it for it's take on Florida's past. Long before air conditioning and Walt Disney, Florida was a wild frontier - and often, a place that people went to disappear. In Killing Mister Watson, Peter Mattheissen takes on the true story of Edgar J. Watson, a man with a questionable past who moves to the Ten Thousand Islands and is soon accused of murder and shot dead by almost everyone in town. This book raised some interesting questions during our book club: Was he really a murderer? Or was he just envied by everyone in town because of his success? Where did he really come from and are those stories about his past true? What does this tell us about small town politics, and human nature? And my biggest question, after having visited his old homestead in Everglades National Park, how did people manage to live down there back then with all those mosquitoes?!?!
Full disclosure: I've only read the first book in the trilogy, but the other two, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone, are currently in my stack of quarantine reads.
2) Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson
This tell-all exposé gives the true and glamorous story of real archaeologists! The mystery and intrigue, the (sometimes) adventurous working conditions, the political fights to save sites, the low paychecks and scare jobs! Marilyn Johnson gives some witty insights into what archaeology really is, and her take on why some of us are driven to it. She takes us all around the world with a great cast of real archaeologists to learn about their research, both the good and the bad, and really does paint a pretty good picture of our live in ruins.
(I also recommend her book on obituary writers, The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiff, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries)
1) Tatham Mound by Piers Anthony
This is one of my favorite books in general! Piers Anthony got involved with the excavations of Tatham Mound in Citrus County back in the 1980s, originally through his children's interest in archaeology and eventually funding part of the project. (The kid lost interest but he hung in there!) Anthony creates an imaginative story of the people buried a the site, a multicomponent burial mound used before and after contact with De Soto. The book is very well researched but also brings elements of magical realism and speculative history to create a wonderful tale of adventure, change, loss and love.
(You can also check out Tatham Mound and the Bioarchaeology of European Contact: Disease and Depopulation in Central Gulf Coast Florida by Dale L. Hutchinson for the more academic version of the story.)
Words and image by Emily Jane Murray, book covers from Amazon.