Tag Archive for digs

Letter from Mexico: Archaeology, Interrupted

Photo: Archaeological Zone of Paquimé, Casas Grandes SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.

from Archaeology.com 

by Kathleen McGuire

An archaeologist’s daughter surveys the rich cultural heritage of northern Mexico—and the impact of violence on researchers working there.

As the young daughter of an archaeologist in the late 1990s, I was raised to understand that Indiana Jones is no more real than Luke Skywalker. I had been on digs and spent hours in my father’s lab where I concluded that, no matter what my classmates thought, my father was just another boring scientist, even if he did wear cowboy boots and skipped the lab coat. Adolescent that I was, I was similarly unimpressed with his work south of the U.S. border in northern Mexico. I knew nothing of the lawless Mexico that people saw on television because my own visits were graced with warm tortillas, birthday piñatas, kind faces, and Coca-Cola in tiny glass bottles. It was at the Thanksgiving table, then, when I was 14, that I first discovered my father’s job might actually be dangerous. . . . Read Complete Report