Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession - Hardcover

Childs, Craig

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316066427 ISBN 13: 9780316066426

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2010

Synopsis

To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero -- or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief?

Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story -- an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.

About this title

About the Author

Craig Childs -- naturalist, adventurer, desert ecologist, and frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition -- lives in Crawford, Colorado. His previous books include House of Rain, The Way Out, The Secret Knowledge of Water, and Soul of Nowhere.

Reviews

Childs (The Animal Dialogues) intermingles personal experiences as a desert ecologist and adventurer with a journalistic look at scientists, collectors, museum officials, and pot hunters to explore what should happen to ancient artifacts. Questioning whether artifacts should be left in place, Childs argues that although surface surveys and electronic imaging permit study of buried objects without digging, that reliance on technology risks the loss of the "physical connection to the memory of ancient people." Yet he mourns the loss of context that comes from removing, say, the Temple of Dendur from its natural environment. On the other hand, he scrutinizes the "stewardship" of past archeologists who removed sacred objects when "o one thought indigenous cultures would survive to start demanding their things back," returns now required by U.S. law. Childs is critical of museum facilities inadequate to protect items that archeologists removed from their sites precisely to preserve them from destruction. He is also unhappy with the legal sale of relics to collectors, which he believes led to "more digging and smuggling." His own "collection" consists of finds he has left in place across the Southwest. But, he says, artifacts that cannot safely be left in place should go to museums. This is an engaging and thought-provoking look at one of the art and artifacts' world's most heated debates.
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Childs treks the canyon-incised Colorado Plateau in search of pre-Columbian artifacts. Their legal regulation collides with collectors’ obsessions to possess them. Childs, though, does not remove what he finds, an ethic that vies with other precepts for the proper preservation of antiquities. For every stand he takes on archaeological morality in this narrative mix of his backcountry experiences and conversations with collectors, curators, dealers, and an occasional looter, Childs engages their justifications for taking custody of ancient objects. As if to underscore ethical fuzziness, Childs relays a personal story of when he absconded with a publicly displayed pot and secreted it in the desert––a theft in the service of righteous restoration? Or is it better to entrust cultural legacies to museums, which are overwhelmed with stuff already? Perhaps, then, private collections have a role in saving objects? Not to the professional archaeologists with whom Childs speaks; they’re horrified by amateurs’ destruction of information when they pry things from their physical context. Alternating romantic and practical moods, Childs hunts virtue as much as baskets in this engaging discourse. --Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316066427
• ISBN 13: 9780316066426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288