Travels with an Archaeologist: Finding a Sense of Place

Description

'You must be very patient', most everyone asserts admiringly on encountering an archaeologist. Patience in the pursuit of history instantly earns consideration. Patience to sift through the soil to discover treasure, from gold to unidentifiable knick-knacks - an educated beachcomber. But, patience does not come into it so much as the chemistry of experiences from being in the company of others as the five senses are provoked and satisfied by the buried unexpected. Archaeology is about hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching past textures in our time. With these senses, in the company of friends, new places are created from old ones. Travel with archaeologist and writer Richard Hodges as he explores sites across the globe and ponders the relationship of the individual with the past and the present of the past in its ruins, monuments and traces of distant worlds and civilisations.

Richard Hodges OBE, is President of The American University of Rome, Italy. He is the editor of the Debates in Archaeology series; and his many publications include The Archaeology of Mediterranean Placemaking (Bloomsbury 2016) and Dark Age Economics (Bloomsbury 2012). He has previously been Scientific Director the Butrint Foundation and Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, USA, and writes widely for magazines.

Hodges claims that he became an archaeologist "to travel to the past". Here is a wonderful and intriguing collection of his postcards from that journey. An insider's view of archaeology for the curious! -- Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, Cambridge University, UK Travels with an Archaeologist takes us on a magical mystery tour through some of the world's most fascinating ancient places and landscapes, in the company of one of my generation's most influential as well as charismatic archaeologists. Along the way we meet many of the exotic band of excavators who have made these places so special for understanding not just our past but who we are today. -- Graeme Barker, Disney Professor of Archaeology Emeritus, University of Cambridge, UK From Albania to Yemen, Hodges has written an immensely readable book that will inspire the archaeologist in all of us. Part travelogue, part historical account, he shares his experiences with some of the most fascinating characters and sites of our times. Travels with an Archaeologist is a sensory adventure full of scholarly insights and wry observations gathered together over a remarkable career in archaeology. -- Lynn Meskell, Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA In Travels with an Archaeologist, a series of sophisticated, endearing, and sometimes provocative essays, Hodges pays tribute to professors and mentors, leading specialists of their generation, who introduced him to and then guided him throughout his career. A misplaced assumption suggesting that an archaeological dig is isolating or dull is turned over from the first pages. Hodges delights in the colleagues, students, and local on-site workers who are caught up in the excitement and joy of those treasures, at least in the eye of the beholders, revealed by their hard work and enthusiasm. * Manhattan Book Review *