Mississippi Archaeology Q & A.

Carson, James Taylor

Mississippi Archaeology Q & A, by Evan Peacock. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. x, 149 pp. $50.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.

I GIVE A LOT OF CREDIT TO EVAN PEACOCK, AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF anthropology at Mississippi State University, because in Mississippi Archaeology Q & A he has crafted a light and nimble book that is at the same time deeply significant to life in Mississippi. This is no small achievement, especially in a book aimed at arm-chair archaeologists, aspiring students, and, hopefully, even young children. While the book introduces the odd insight into the archaeological scholarship on Mississippi, its cardinal value is Peacock's engaging and often humorous exposure of the assumptions that the broader public has of his arcane and grimy profession.

Peacock structures the book around a series of basic questions that enable him to depict a comprehensive picture of the scholarship of archaeology as well as how and why it is practiced in Mississippi: "Why Do We Do Archaeology?" "How Do You Know Where to Dig?" "Did You Find Any Gold Yet?" "Can the Government Take My Stuff Away?" It is refreshing to be confronted with such fundamental questions, because in answering them and many others Peacock engages readers in the process whereby archaeologists find, identify, excavate, catalog, and interpret what they find. When he shares his own stories from the field--overhearing a farmer propose to a summer student--and his own life experience--working as a TV repairman or finding projectile points as a child--he sidesteps what could have been a very boring book about the ABC's of archaeology and crafts what is instead a story. And cringing at his depictions of pothunters, for example, goes a long way toward preparing the reader to take seriously his impassioned defense of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and his sincere efforts to enjoin all Mississippians in the preservation and appreciation of the state's ancient past.

Peacock's evocation of Mississippi's antiquity, however, never lapses into an appreciation of the past for the past's sake. Offering timely insights throughout the book, he forces readers to confront archaeological practice and its contemporary relevance. On the question of environmental sustainability, for example, he reminds us that "we have three million years of cultural interaction with nature from which we can seek inspiration, knowledge, and guidance. We would be foolish to ignore such a potent source of information [as that contained in the archaeological record]" (10). And such sentiments are not idle comments on today's preoccupation with global warming. For Peacock, how we think about archaeology in particular, but even more so about the past in general, is fundamental to our identity as people.

I would not have expected a book entitled Mississippi Archaeology Q &A to break my heart, but it did on page 107. Above a stark photo of a backhoe tearing apart an 800-year-old mound in Hinds County, Peacock informs us that because the mound sat on private property and because no burials were associated with it, a property developer was able to demolish a structure that had stood in that spot for centuries. "[I]n the space of a few hours," Peacock mourns, "it was gone." It is easy to rail against the wholesale obliteration of the ancient and even more recent past that occurs every day in our society, but Peacock draws out the larger implications of today's short-term attention spans. "When a people destroy their past," he writes, "it speaks little for the kind of future that their own children will someday inherit" (68).

Mississippi Archaeology Q & A does what it is supposed to do--it tells us what archaeologists do, how they figure out how old things are, what they do with the objects after they study them, and, most helpfully, tells young folk how to become archaeologists if such should strike their fancy. But Peacock is able to transcend such mundane matters by his thoughtful engagement with bigger questions. In the end, this book about the practice of a social science is held aloft by the author's humanism and carried along by his deft mix of clinically professional discussion, sharply insightful criticism, and warmly wry anecdotes.

JAMES TAYLOR CARSON

Queen's University