Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
I’ve always had a natural affinity for recognizing patterns. I see this as a genetic trait that contributed to our survival- ‘let’s not camp near the volcano again’, has saved more lives than it’s alternative has cost. I don’t know when it first began, it was a confluence of events; my father and I watching the PBS series Civilization with Arthur C. Clark on Sunday evenings, being given the Time-Life book Early Man one Christmas, and the accidental find of an early archaic, corner-notched Kirk point fashioned from Macungie jasper in an empty potato field near my school.
By the time I was seven I could confidently find artifacts in most plowed fields around our home while everyone else walked past them without notice. If I was on a hilltop above water, if there were flakes of chert or flint scattered about, or small round river cobbles with one or more sides ground down from percussion flaking I knew with certainty that Indians had camped here, had sharpened their tools there, hunted game somewhere further off. I was fascinated by archaeology, ancient man, his tools and his history and I never lost my interest in the subject no matter what I did or where I lived.
Continue reading “Observations of an Invalid Part II: Borders and Walls”
