This time the excuses are multiple. I’ve been on two short trips, one to Newport Beach Nautical Museum to give a lecture, the second to talk about ancient emergencies to a hospital group in San Francisco. Both audiences were enthusiastic and pleasant, which makes all the difference. Then I caught a short but nasty cold, which has laid me out for a week.

Fortunately, I’ve recovered just in time to fly to the UK for Current Archaeology’s Archaeology Festival in Cardiff. They asked me to go last year, but I couldn’t make it owing to a conflict, so it’s Cardiff instead of the British Museum. I’m going over a little early to adjust to jet lag, see colleagues in Durham, and, if the weather allows, take a walk on Hadrian’s Wall. I haven’t been there in a decade and certainly not in mid-winter. The forecast is for rain and snow, so we will see.

It’ll be a relief not to be writing for a change. I’ve just delivered the advanced draft of my latest book to my publisher for their detailed editorial comment, so the pressure’s off until they send me their comments for the final version. It’s a book on the Cro-Magnons, a subject that’s fascinated me since I was an undergraduate and was able to see some of the cave paintings by acetylene lamp—a memorable experience. I also visited the original Lascaux, although the replica is absolutely superb. The book is not about art—everyone writes about that—but about the Cro-Magnons as people. Of course the art factors into the story, but there is no much more than cave paintings and artifacts. I guess the book will appear either late this year or early next. Much depends on what the editor says and how long it will take me to revise it. The book was a fascinating and arduous project, involving not only extensive traveling but also a prolonged journey through some of the most intricate and obscure literature I have ever read. Anything will be much easier after this project, but I learned a huge amount.

         And now for the legendary hospitality of United Airlines….

The classical archaeologist David Meadows, based, I think, in Canada, does us a wonderful service with his weekly Explorator bulletins that cover discoveries and headlines of the week. (You can subscribe for free by sending a blank e-mail message to Explorator-subscribe@yahoogroups. com) How he locates some of the stories, I know not, but he covers an astonishing range of topics, everything from paleoanthropology to obituaries, looting tourism, and blogs. He keeps me up to date on all kinds of important and more esoteric finds, as well as the hyped claims often put out by well-known academic journals, who should know better. David has a discerning eye and a nice sense of both the ridiculous and the downright zany, as well as a touch of skepticism. This is very much a labour of love, for which we should be very grateful. Did you know that gladiatorial performances are returning to Rome and that warfare practices in New Guinea may throw light on Ohio earthwork design? Thanks to David Meadows, you do now.

Yes, I have been quiet again, but with good reason. I have been finishing a book manuscript and developing the illustration program, always one of the worst jobs with any book—and archaeology is a picture intensive subject. Add to that the long Christmas break and its distractions. So I have plenty of excuses. Over the holidays, I had a chance to read the paleontologist Dale Guthrie’s magnum opus, The Nature of Paleolithic Art. This is a stupendous work, which draws on Dale’s expertise as a working paleontologist and talented artist. He’s spent a lifetime piecing together bones and other materials to study ancient human behavior and prehistoric environments. His central thesis argues that Cro-Magnon and other Stone Age art is a mode of expression that we can understand much better than we often assume. This is because a natural history perspective is a central part of any interpretation of an art tradition that depicts so many members of the late Ice Age bestiary. The book is really a series of essays that combines ethology, evolutionary biology, and human universals as a way of gaining access to the intangible realm that surrounded the art. Dale shows how the art was created by people of different ages, not just by male shamans, boosting his often-controversial ideas with his own observations in the field. Just the chapter on the so-called Venus figurines is worth the price of admission—the essay on voluptuous women is both insightful and right to the point. Time after time, Dale breaks new ground in what is one of the most important, if controversial, books on Paleolithic art to appear in many years. Doubtless many rock art aficionados will hate it, which is their privilege. But they should not set it aside without a thorough reading, for there is rich treasure in its pages, apart from a great deal of excellent, clear, and often funny writing. You’ll never look at rock art the same way after reading Guthrie. 

Another long silence, alas. My apologies once again. I’ve been completely preoccupied with finishing the first draft of a book manuscript (of which more in a few months), which is now being disemboweled by experts. I promise more regular blogs in coming weeks.

         A momentary distraction came with the announcement of the discovery of tools made with blade technology dating to at least 285,000 years ago. Startling at first glance, especially when you reflect that there is pretty general agreement that Homo sapiens, ourselves, first appeared in tropical Africa about 200,000 years ago. The date, obtained by the argon-argon method, which is far more accurate than the long-established potassium argon technique, comes from Gademotta in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, known to be a crucible of human evolution. It coincides remarkably well with a second site, Kapthurin in Kenya, which dates to about the same time.

         Both Gademotta and Kapthurin have yielded small and sophisticated blades and spear points, very different from the large hand axes and cleaving tools so widely used in Africa at the time. The Gademotta tools are made from obsidian, a fine-grained volcanic glass and come from below and above a volcanic layer, which yielded the date of 280,000 years ago.

         For generations, archaeologists have equated stone technologies based on small, basically parallel-sided blades with modern humans. They’ve found them in Southern Africa dating to around 70,000 years ago, where such tools appear and disappear, as if the technology was used, then abandoned, perhaps in response to changing environmental conditions, notably drought. Now what is claimed to be blade technology dates back thousands of years earlier. What does this mean in human terms? Did the cognitive skills associated with modern humans develop gradually over a long period of time, or are these artifacts temporary developments, reflecting times of experimentation or purely local needs, or even the availability of exceptionally find raw materials?

         We don’t know, of course, but it’s clear from Gademotta and Kapthurin that the development of modern humans both culturally and biologically was more complicated than perhaps we realize.

         And so the archaeological dance goes on. . . . 

I’ve gotten interested inEskimo and Inuit ethnography, in some of the early accounts of hunting in someof the harshest environments on earth. What got me on this journey was a visitto the museum in Anchorage, which boasts of a magnificent display of Aleut andEskimo material culture. Anoraks made of bird membrane and seal stomach bags gotme into a quest for truly authentic accounts of hunting in the north and,almost immediately, to two books written by anthropologist Richard Nelson. His Hunters of the Northern Ice, publishedin 1969, is a study of Alaska’s Wainwright Eskimos at a time when manytraditional behaviors, hunting methods, and technologies were still in use. Hisessay on the qualities displayed by the hunter—collaboration, estimating risk, passingon information, and so on, go far beyond the sterile accounts of northernartifacts that you encounter in the works of earlier anthropologists likeCornelius Osgood. Osgood describes spears and awls, traps and houses, but yourarely get a sense of the people behind the artifacts. His books are like manymuseum displays—sterile and devoid of interest to anyone but a fellowspecialist. Even the people themselves would have had trouble deciphering his drearycatalogs. In Nelson’s study, the people and their frustrations, their successesand failures, come alive in a way that illuminates both present and pastbrilliantly.

         He did a later studyof the Koyukon of the boreal forest, which is equally perceptive , as itrevolves around their world view. He describes how they would talk to bears asthey hunted them, of the great dependence of the people on caribou, of the traditionalpractices and beliefs that still were at the core of society.

         Read Nelson and theclassic works of Farley Mowet. You’ll emerge with a profound appreciation ofthe skill and ingenuity of historic northerners. Not as sterile objects ofstudy, but as human beings. And where else will you learn that the best hidefor boot uppers comes from caribou legs?

Yes, I know, I know—too longsince I last blogged! All I can plead is an excuse is travel, a great deal ofit, and impending book deadlines. The fall is usually very busy with lecturesand other commitments on the road, this time to a wide variety oforganizations. These included a faculty retreat at Columbia Community Collegein Pasco, Washington, lectures to National Geographic and the SacramentoArchaeological Society, and to a conference of hospital administratorsresponsible for emergencies. All this time on the road culminated in a superbvisit to the University of Western Ontario at London, Ontario. Apart fromgiving a public lecture, I was corralled into answering questions about The Little Ice Age from amultidisciplinary group of graduate students for two-and-a-half hours. Theyasked perceptive and sometimes humbling questions. I realized once again howlittle I know about climatic and environmental issues.

Why a conference onemergencies you may well ask? This is actually the fourth time I’ve lectured tosuch groups and was the question I asked first time. The answer they gave wasthat human nature has not changed and that responses to emergencies in humanterms have probably remained the same. When I looked into it, indeed they had.Decisive leadership, controlling borders, rationing food, and the importance ofkin and family all resonated from history, issues as important then as they aretoday.

On this subject, if youhave not read Mike Davis’s Late VictorianHolocausts, with its harrowing descriptions of 19^th-centurytropical famines caused by monsoon failure and inept governance, do so. Davisestimates that between 20 and 30 milliontropical farmers perished of famine and famine related diseases during the nineteenthcentury—and that at a time when there were many fewer people living onagriculturally marginal lands. You’ll never think the same way about famineagain.

Something to think about inan era of impending drought and global warming.

My apologies for thesilence. I’ve been too busy bicycling to blog. The Lofotens were spectacularand we were blessed with superb weather on all but one of the six days. Onewore layers as protection against the fiendish cold winds, the bicyclist’scurse. Except for the headwinds, the riding was fabulous—windy roads androlling terrain—what our leaders euphemistically called “rolling hills” whenthey were often small mountains. The islands were once a remote place where codwere harvested in winter, dried in spring and early summer, and then exportedin a trade that goes back to medieval times. Gadus morhua was the Norse beef jerky: we tried it and I loved it.The fishing villages still exist, but have been sanitized by modernity. Theweather beaten fishing cabins have now become summer homes and hotels—we sleptin bunk beds in modernized cabins that were simple, yet adequate enough to cooka feast for eight people. Despite the modernization, the cod industry is stillaround you. Gone are the small double-ended boats of yesteryear, but woodendiesel powered fishing craft are still commonplace. Stark, empty cod racksstand on exposed outcrops, ready for next year’s catch. And several museumstell the story of cod fishing, with techniques that are almost unchanged frommedieval times-except for the boats. They are wonderful rummage warehouses ofsimple technologies that survived until the middle of the last century,sometimes even later. We were able to go behind the scenes at the restoredfishing village of Nusafjord, wherewe saw piles of equipment abandoned from earlier times, also stacks of cod fromthis year’s harvest waiting to be shipped out. Everywhere sticklike carcasses,light as feathers that you could throw across the room without damage, gradedaccording to criteria set up centuries ago. It’s heartening to see theexpertise of the past still being used today.

The flight from LA toLondon seems interminable, especially if you’re used to the routine. Take off,a drink, dinner, try to sleep, a bleary-eyed breakfast an hour out of Heathrow,then jet lag to stagger creation. Sometimes the aftermath is almost surrealist.I remember landing years ago early one summer morning, renting a car, thendriving some two hours later down a narrow country land on a gorgeous June morning. The transition was so bizarre, so extreme, that I burst out laughing at the sheer joy of life. They say that travel wears thin with age and I tendto agree, having had a surfeit of business travel over the past year. But thereare magical moments and I hope this trip will have plenty of them.

         A rare journey thisone, devoted to entirely to pleasure. Three days in England in Aldeburgh,Suffolk, on the East Coast, seeing friends and (trying) to overcome jet lag.Tomorrow will bring the pleasure of a highly technical conversation aboutweather helm in a Caledonia Yawl with a yacht designer friend and dinner withsome old African acquaintances of more years ago then I care to remember. Thenon to Oslo, and the highlight—5 ½ days bicycling in Norway’s Lofoten Islands,north of the Arctic Circle.

         Why the LofotenIslands, people have asked? I’m tempted to respond with the classic “becausethey are there,” but the real reason I want to see them is because of cod. Someyears ago, I traveled extensively for my book Fish on Friday, but the one place I couldn’t get to was theLofotens. They were just too far off the beaten track and my research budgetwas limited. For centuries, the islands were a mainstay of the medieval codtrade. The Norse ate dried Lofoten cod on their journeys to Iceland andbeyond—the beef jerky of the day. The islanders caught thousands of fish fromopen boats in mid-winter and dried them on wooden racks in the cold spring sunand wind. They still catch cod and sell it abroad, even the fish heads, whichare delicacy in Nigeria. So there’s lots of cod racks to see, even if most ofthe drying is finished for this year. When I learned that Backroads, the Berkeley-basedbike touring company, run two trips a year to the islands, I grabbed at thechance to go.

         So here I am inmid-Atlantic, wishing the flight was over, but excited that the adventure hasbegun. Only 1 hour 55 minutes to go until that most ghastly ofexperiences—Heathrow airport at 7.15am!

LesEyzies in southwestern France bills itself as the Capital of Prehistory, whichis hardly surprising, given the extraordinary diversity of late Ice Age sitesin the Vezère river valley. But I would hardly describe the village itself asan attractive one, except for its setting, nestled under precipitous, riversidecliffs. The main street is a strip of restaurants, gift shops, and boasts ofpay parking (on weekdays). Of course, there’s the Les Eyzies Museum, which ismagnificent if you want an intensive education in Stone Age technology. There’salso a small store at the other end of the street where, if you are lucky, you’llfind a modern-day flintknapper in action and can buy a finely crafted Solutreanpoint, which the French describe elegantly as a laurel leaf, a feuille delaurier. Apart from the well-known caves like Font de Gaume and LesCombarelles, there’s also Abri Pataud, conveniently located on the main street.(And, by the way, you can always walk to the Cro-Magnon Hotel, enjoy a nicemeal, and visit the Cro-Magnon rockshelter behind the employees’ houses. Allyou’ll see is a plaque, but you will have paid homage at the shrine . . . .).

         AbiPataud is named after the Pataud family, who owned it until the late HallamMovius of Harvard University purchased the site in 1948. From 1958 to 1964, heexcavated the rockshelter in a series of long field seasons that set newstandards for cave excavation, using the Pataud toolshed as a workshop.Fortunately, the excavations are still open for the inquisitive visitor,complete with the network of iron pipes used as a permanent site recordingsystem. A visit to the dig with its closely packed layers and large bouldersfrom the roof is a quick education in the intricacies of excavation onCro-Magnon sites. Hearths appear as compressed, dark layers of charcoal. Flinttools protrude from the walls of the trenches, varying in density from onelayer to the next. Abri Pataud is a magnificent record of Aurignacian andGravettian occupation, spanning a long period between about 32,000 and 20,500years ago. Pataud was one of the first late Ice Age rockshelters to beradiocarbon dated thoroughly. Students are still analyzing the huge quantitiesof animal bones and stone tools found in the excavations. A generation of PhDshave come from the Movius excavations.

         AbriPataud is well worth a visit, not only to see the dense sequence of narrowlayers and the museum with its ibex in low relief on the low ceiling, but alsoto ponder the staggering difficulties involved in deciphering life during thelate Ice Age. All credit to the French Government for opening the site tovisitors in 1990. More than any other site near Les Eyzies, it offers a glimpseinto life in one of the most densely occupied areas of Ice Age Europe when Homo sapiens in the form of theCro-Magnons was still a relatively newcomer, and, for some time, handfuls ofNeanderthals still lurked in remote valleys nearby.