Earlier this week, I came upon Dea at the reference desk, reading Archeology Today and laughing. I thought maybe she had some bizarre romance novel hidden under the magazine, but further inquiry revealed that Dea was actually laughing at Archeology Today. She told me she had considered becoming an archaeologist, a revelation which prompted Ardis to reveal the same, as well as one of the new temps who was training that night. I am, apparently, surrounded by latent archaeologists! Who read magazines on the subject!
I was also surprised to find there’s apparently a whole genre of archaeologist fiction. In the hopes of saving Dea from further fits of joyous giggling over featured articles in Archaeology Today (which I feel like is a joke waiting to happen – where is Archaeology Yesterday?) I did a tag mash for archeology and fantasy, then for archeology and history, and finally ended up with a great list from archeology, fantasy, history:
- Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
- The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony
- The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas
- Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization by Graham Hancock
- Ancient ruins and Archaeology by L. Sprague de Camp
- Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Daniken
- Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
- Atlantis by David Gibbins
- Ancient Mysteries by Peter James
- Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
- Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
- The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters
- Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters
- Barbarians to Angels by Peter S. Wells
- The Egyptologist: A Novel by Arthur Phillips
- Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon by Lesley Adkins
- The Buried Pyramid by Jane Lindskold
Ooh, look, there’s an article about a tattooed mummy in October’s issue of <i>Archeology</i>! Wait, the enthusiasm must be catchy!
-Andrea
Dea’s Note: This is a great list, and I’m definitely going to thank Andrea for her hard work, but… someone on librarything has clearly been tagging some non-fiction archaeology books with “fantasy.” Are they, too, living a fantasy life through their reading material? Or is this the tagging version of a slam against the theories in these books? Hmm…
Watertown Readers' Advisory 