Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 08/09/2011 - 10:02

First, I hope you've gotten a chance to collect some of those blueberries you mentioned--tundra blueberries are the best!

More seriously, you talk about how archeologists gradually develop a narrative about the sites they investigate, building a picture of the people who lived there. One of the classics of the "imagine the future archeologist investigating us" genre is "Body ritual among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner (American Anthropologist, June 1956). It's a bit of a parody, but also a pretty good example of how a narrative is developed, including how that narrative might be wrong due to lack of context for the finds. There's a link to the pdf, as well as to related information in Wikipedia's Nacirema article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema.

Joe

Susy Ellison

Thanks for the comment and pdf. There's also a great book by, I think, David McAuley--Motel of Mystery--that is a good parody of creating stories from artifacts.