– Please note that this post has been delayed by three or so months, it seemed appropriate to post it now though it has become somewhat disjointed.
Things have been a bit quiet on this site lately as I settle down into a new job (1). I’ve also been working on two interviews for the blog behind the scenes and I hope to bring them to fruition within a few weeks. So it is fair to say that the free time I have had has been largely spent relaxing by reading various books; more often than not reaching for a fiction or non-fiction volume that has little to do with human skeletal remains or matters of archaeological importance. Though I admit I have been dipping into The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology, by Joanna Sofaer, on occasion. Instead I present here some literary gems that I’m re-reading or have recently discovered by chance and wish to share with you, my dear readers.
In the past month or two I’ve taken the opportunity to sit out and read in the garden, taking time to admire the change in seasons as we slip into Spring. I’ve been joined by a flurry of both wild and domesticated animals as I sit and drink my coffee and write notes, hearing and seeing a motley collection of avian companions enjoy the fruits of a fresh crop. As I’ve written here before in Bones of Contention I’m lucky enough to share the garden with three domesticated hens and these delightful birds (of the inquisitive Gingernut Ranger breed) provide all the friendly chirping and cooing as one could want. Though, when let loose (now that the latest avian influenza scare has been downgraded in England) to forage in the garden and to take their much-loved mud baths, they can sometimes unexpectedly jump up onto the table at which I am pondering my life and steal whatever is waiting to be eaten on my plate before scampering away, guilt-free and clucking happily.
Caught in the act. A quickly took shot of a cheeky hen in the garden where I try to spend my time reading, scribbling notes and drinking coffee, if not chasing chickens. Photograph by author using a Pentax ME Super and Lomography Lady Grey film, if used elsewhere please credit as appropriate.
I’ve been lucky enough to see a whole host of other animal visitors to the garden too, including blue tits, whizzing robins and fleet of foot blackbirds in the fresh spring morning, as well as hearty magpies, hefty wood pigeons and loved-up collared doves; even to seeing a cheeky mouse scampering around during the day, as all the while seagulls spread their wings and soar freely overhead. It really is quite a delight and a breath of fresh air to be away from the click and whir of computers, to replace the digital with dappled light cast through the flickering leaves as the gusts of winds blow the cobwebs away and make you appreciate the world anew. (Even amidst the dire national and international news). Of course it is easy to romanticize the natural world in contrast to the world of bricks, cement and microprocessors, where the two may seem so separate as to be alien to each other, yet this isn’t really the case as we share the same space. So I shall stop my sermonizing!
Writing, Reading, Learning, Enjoying
As I’ve been reading various volumes or books in the past month or two I was reminded of the importance of expression, of the freedom to read and the freedom to write, as something that I, for now, can largely take for granted when for other individuals in the world it is a hard-fought for thing. As a member of English PEN I was reminded of this as the roll-call of detained journalists, writers, poets and artists who had made their mark known and suffered what they must for the idea of self-expression and freedom of the written and spoken word, landed in my email inbox. I have to admit I’d almost forgotten I’d signed up to join English PEN as I’m so often lost between the various archaeological societies or associations that take a slice out of my payslip each month. (Honestly Society for American Archaeology, you can stop sending me your trans-Atlantic reminders to re-join now that it has been 2 years since I left – please think of the trees!).
Recent developments across the world have delivered to me a quake of realization, that underfoot nothing is as solid or as stable as it seems. This is something that a friend mentioned a few weeks ago and I think it one that I generally agree with; that to become complacent is to assume stability as a fact of life when we know well enough that things happen, not always for the worse and not always for the better.
Introducing 404 INK
I was reminded of independent expression when, in a serendipitous occurrence, I came across the website of 404 INK, a new independent publisher of literary magazines and books based in Scotland and spearheaded by Edinburgh-based publisher and editor due of Laura Jones and Heather McDaid. After having a read through of their website, aims and current content, I decided to order a hard copy of the first issue of their literary magazine, released in November 2016, which has the theme of Error. Having now read the majority of the entries, ranging from interviews, fiction and non-fiction stories, poems, and cartoons, all of which touched upon the error concept in some way, I’ve become a big fan of their publishing output. I’m excited to see what awaits me as a reader for the 2nd issue, with the topic of ‘the F word’, a starting off-point for each authors choice and implementation within their work (2).
Eating Animals, Eating Humans
As an aside and among the books I’ve been grazing on are Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (always good to challenge your perceptions and habits), an unfinished re-read of Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and an abridged version of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Each volume can be related to the other as the history within each is so entwined with the author’s own experiences and perceptions. Of course any comparisons between such disparate topics such as an account of the Gulag system, investigation into the moral and business implications of farming animals, and the creative endeavors of magical realism, may be tenuous as best but each is rich with creativity and equally unsettling with the presentation of documentary evidence. I’d recommend them as the volumes are well worth a read.
A New Style: Influence from Svetlana Alexievich
I’ve also been thinking about bringing back a new form of blog entry: the unfiltered viewpoint of the archaeological professional, as experimented with in two recent blog entries that largely focused on anonymous field archaeologists in Digging Up Time parts 1 and 2. The two posts were influenced in style by Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-Hand Time: The Last of the Soviets publication, which presents the experiences of witnesses in the modern-day Russian Federation and the surrounding countries who lived through the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This time I think I’ll shift the emphasis towards bioarchaeologists and human osteologists, and their viewpoints on working with the skeletal remains of past individuals and populations from the archaeological record. If you are interested in taking part in the above (providing that I need further testimonies), then please do feel free to contact me and I’ll provide a writing prompt and guideline for the style of the post. Check out the above two posts first though to get a feel for the style of the entries.
Notes
(1). I became uncharacteristically ill over spring hence the delayed timing of this post.
(2). The 2nd edition of the 404 INK literary magazine, with the F Word theme, recently became available to purchase. Check it out here.
Further Reading
Foer, J. S. 2010. Eating Animals. London: Penguin.
Márquez, G. G. 2000. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. London: Penguin Classics.
McDaid, H. & Jones, L. eds. 2016. Error: 404 INK Literary Magazine. Issue 1 November 2016. Glasgow: Bell & Bain.
Sofaer, J. R. 2006. The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Solzhenitsyn, A. 2003. The Gulag Archipelago 1918-56: A Experiment in Literary Investigation. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Whitney & Harry Willets, abridged by Edward Ericson Jr. London: The Harvill Press.
These Bones Of Mine 