August 18, 2004

• Fires and Archaeology

  If this year’s Alaskan wildfires have uncovered any previously unknown
  archaeological sites as the fires in Arizona did a few years ago, or if
  any of the fires here threaten known sites, I haven’t heard about
  it.  The connections between my two subjects today are more
  tenuous than that.

  I was listening to NPR news this evening as I was shelving books we
  brought from Elvenhurst, our old home across the highway, in the new
  bookshelves in the back room here.  The report on our wildfires
  repeated something Greyfox told me this morning:  this year’s
  fires have now topped the previous record of 5-point-something million
  acres.  Two big complexes (areas where several fires have joined
  into a big one) up north are still burning and over a thousand people
  are actively fighting them now, with helicopters and
  water-scooping airplanes. 

  One detail from the radio news that I hadn’t heard before was that the
  big local fire was a prescribed burn planned last year, to clear moose
  habitat, improve their browse and the health of the herd.  Those
  who planned it didn’t know that this was going to be the hottest,
  driest summer on record.  They say that without this hot dry
  weather, the burn would not have succeeded, so that’s good for the
  moose.  They also say that the amount of smoke it is contributing
  to the atmosphere locally is minor compared to what is coming from the
  bigger fires up north.   We had been under a temperature
  inversion that was holding all the smoke at ground level here in the
  valley, but that appears to have cleared.  The winds have shifted
  and the sky above is a hazy blue-gray now, not brown as previously.

  After I decided to share that news here, when I’d packed it in for the
  day in the library and chased Doug away from the computer, I googled
  for a news link to include.  The most recent one, one hour ago at
  that time, was Reuters UK.  Here’s that link to the Alaskan wildfires.  At the bottom of that page was a box of teasers that included two interesting archaeological finds. 

  One of them is an ancient city in Peru,
  Pre-Inca, discovered by Sean Savoy and his father, a longtime mentor of
  mine, Gene Savoy.  I know or can surmise a lot of things that were
  not included in the story, such as why they were looking where they
  were, what the elder Savoy hoped to find, and how pleased and validated
  he must feel now.  For people such as Gene Savoy, and I include
  myself, there is no boundary between science and metaphysics.  He
  has been tracking the evidence of that culture for decades, and
  armchair archaeologists like me have been cheering him on.

  The other story was of a find in Israel, a cave linked to John the Baptist. 
  In it, they found paintings that suggest the cave was associated with
  John in Byzantine times, but had been “lost” around the 11th century,
  during the Crusades.  I’m fascinated.  I’ll be watching for
  more news on both finds.
  

  • 12:04 am
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