Archaeology: A Young Science for Young Readers

By its very nature, archaeology as a science may be too difficult for children to understand, as indeed it is for many adults. Agatha Christie, who was married to an archaeologist (Sir Max Mallowan, who excavated in Iraq for many years), put this difficulty into words very succinctly in one of her mystery novels, They Came to Baghdad: "Captain Crosbie said he never could understand how archaeologists were able to say so definitely how old these things were. Always used to think they must be the most awful liars, ha, ha . . . but how did an archaeologist know how old a thing was?"¹ The idea of taking something from the ground—whether the artifact is a piece of jewelry or pottery, an article of clothing, or even a body—and then, based on information gleaned from it and its context, drawing conclusions about the nature of a particular culture, causes skepticism and bewilderment and, in some cases, alarm. In fact, archaeologists, who spend a considerable amount of time at this, have many and varied ways of determining the age of an artifact, and new, more accurate methods are always being developed. Of course, no single method now being used is 100 percent accurate, but this vulnerability on the part of what is really a very young science may be one of the reasons why so few books about archaeology are published specifically for children. In two years of gathering archaeological books in print for children for a survey in Archaeology Magazine, I found only about thirty. (The number of books for the adult market in the same period would be more than ten times that amount.)

The books did cover a wide range of specific archaeological topics. Ancient Greece and Egypt, the Vikings, Stonehenge, and colonial America are always popular subjects, although they seem to be less so for the adult market.² At this time there are no particular "hot" issues in archaeology, such as the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen or, recently, that of Philip of Macedon, or the unearthing of an Aztec temple in the center of Mexico City, discovered when workmen were building an extension to the city's subway system. Due most likely to cutbacks in federal government grant money, and to political unrest in some particularly fertile archaeological areas, such as Iran, which has been closed to American excavators, this appears to be a period of retrenchment. Fieldwork is basic to archaeology, and archaeologists must always spend some time in the field; but now they seem to be engaged more in lab work, consolidating their data. Lab work, though stimulating and sophisticated, is somewhat tedious. Absolutely essential to the archaeologist, it nevertheless carries none of the romance of digging and does not make good subject matter for children. It is highly impersonal and probably would not hold their interest for very long.

Still there are ways to make lab work less tiresome, and high quality books that do focus on the more "scientific" aspects of archaeology are being published. For example, Secrets from the Past³ helps the young reader become more familiar with the techniques, terminology, and tools of archaeology, and thereby learn to avoid "dwelling on the archaeologist as a collector of artifacts . . . rather emphasizes the long range results of archaeological research, i.e., the interpretation and understanding of the life and activities of past peoples."⁴ By concentrating not on artifactual material, but on the methods of excavation, the author helps the young reader develop a sense of how the archaeologist is able to distinguish time periods, a very important and complicated concept. In Frontiers in the Soil,⁵ aimed at the high school student, the "reader is told how to construct a stratigraphic mini-site in an aquarium or plastic planter which can then be excavated scientifically,"⁶ along with other experiments. Stratigraphy is extremely important in archaeology, and an understanding of it goes a long way in helping the child discover how archaeologists know what they know. Frontiers in the Soil, in particular, directly involves the reader in doing archaeology, thus making it more concrete...