Longing For Quiet Landscape

As I rolled up to the front of my house after being gone six weeks, I made note of how terrific the front yard looked. Before I left on my trip, I spent most of my time combing Craigslist, working on obtaining the right kind of rocks (as in... free to a good home), personally picking up the rocks, shoveling almost every bit of those rocks into the back of the truck and then shoveling them out when I got to my house. I fussed and planned and rearranged. I moved a prickly pear from one side of the yard to the front, unearthing an old sidewalk about 0.75m under the yard in the process.It needed to look just so, because life is so much better with a beautifully landscaped front yard... or so I thought.

The next thought after admiring the handiwork was that it still didn't look right. Something was missing. Uneasiness crept in. What the hell? I couldn't shake that feeling.

It took three days for it to dawn on me...

                                                         Photo credit: Jay Stephens

It wasn't the landscape that I had become accustomed to seeing every day. That landscape looked more like this:

It has now been two weeks since those thoughts entered my head. Two weeks of rolling up on that beautiful, almost finished front yard and feeling uneasy, as if something in the universe was badly skewed.

I have managed to function, going to work, eating the occasional meal, having some meaningful adult conversation, all the while knowing that my front yard didn't look that good to me anymore. Sounds strange, doesn't it?

I've had a love affair with landscapes for as long as I can remember. If the earth and the sky in a particular longitude and latitude speak to me...if it calls me....then I know. I can live here. I can call this home for a little while. I am grateful when this happens because my soul is rather gypsy-like and I don't love that many places.

                       More comfortable with my face (and feet) in the wind than in the air conditioning.

I have grown tired of the noise of my big small town. Ready to be quiet. I'm ready to walk the hills and climb the rocks and hang over cliffs. I'm ready to survey the land and bury my fingers (and trowel) in the dirt. Connect with the history of the people who came before me. I'm ready.

 I know my time in Tucson is not quite done. I will start another landscaping project to occupy my mind. Perhaps this trick will put a band-aid on my wild, wandering heart just a little longer.

It is, after all, about the landscape.

                                                          Photo Credit: Jay Stephens

The importance of social history in Archaeology

I have recently completed a small project undertaken during Archaeology Southwest's field school in Mule Creek, New Mexico. I interviewed local residents with regard to artifacts they may have found, sites they might know about and their general opinion of Preservation Archaeology. Some important questions arose. One question was asked by a person in the field school. He wanted to know my opinion of the people I was studying and their practice of collection of surface artifacts. That's a tough question with a very long answer.I will address a few of the things that I encountered and how I feel about them.

I like "hunting" artifacts and keep them when I find them. 

Where are these artifacts being found? On private land that belongs to the person who found them? I'd like to think, in a perfect world, that the information and the artifacts would be shared with someone in the Archaeology community. Educating people on the importance of this is vital to the historical record. Are they taking artifacts from public land? We all know that's just breaking the law, plain and simple. Did it happen before laws were put into effect to stop this behavior?  I don't think anything we can do today will change what happened in the past, unless their record keeping was amazing and we have the provenance of said artifact. Thus, the importance of oral history in this case.

It's just a hobby. I draw the line at digging burials.

While I am pleased to hear that the person making this statement would not consider disturbing a burial, a hobbyist does not an Archaeologist make. It is important to make friends in the community, so gut reactions need to take a backseat at times. Changing opinions can sometimes take a very long time. Walk gently....

How do you feel when these people tell you stories?

I tend to look at it with gratitude. These people are telling me stories from the past. They have decided that I am worthy to hear these stories and while I may not agree with everything that they tell me, I believe in their right to tell it and my right to hear it. If it helps us to understand things that have happened in the past, it can't be all bad.

I was also asked-

How can you change people's opinions that are decades old?

Simple. Education. Education of the next generation.Many people learn from their children (and grandchildren). Let's see if we can take a non-combative approach to changing the mindset that artifacts are meant to be taken and hoarded, or worse, sold to the highest bidder on ebay. Looking to the young to change old attitudes is the way of this country, is it not?