Archaeology

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Archaeology

ARCHAEOLOGY

We've long said that The Bone Room is 'like a natural history museum', and natural history museums almost always have archaeological and anthropological departments - so why has it taken so long for The Bone Room to add ancient artifacts and coins to the items on offer? Well, mainly it is because Ron had not yet developed an interest in the subject; he was still entranced with all the other 'ologies represented in Bone Room stock.

But I have long been interested in archaeology. Even before I was putting insect parts under a microscope, I was reading about digging up Indian burial mounds, and excavations in Italy and Egypt, and thinking about mythology and old, old religions. Over the years I've made my own collection of small items, mysterious or meaningful to me. Nothing grand, nothing important or expensive - I'm not a Hearst or a Getty - but items that were made and used by people generations ago, which make me feel a connection to the past.

SO we are starting a new chapter in the Book of The Bone Room, and opening up a new section of the website to offer manmade items dating back hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. These items are from my collection, and other peoples' collections, and are therefore legal to buy and sell. Whenever I have information about the history or origin of the piece, I have included it, but often with these interesting but unimportant pieces, the item has been sold, handed down and re-sold so often the provenance is lost. Any archaeological or anthropological information I pass on with the object must be considered with the understanding that our knowledge of ancient beliefs and traditions is based on the often spotty archaeological record - more and better information might become available with the next great find, the next edition of the AJA.

The pieces offered here are of little or no interest to a museum; they are common pieces, or broken pieces, or their provenance is spotty. But though they have no scientific value, I think they have incredible emotional value. To hold a pendant - even a broken piece of a pendant - that was worn by a Roman centurion, or to contemplate a fertility statuette made 13,000 years ago - to me this helps give us perspective, makes real the people of times so remote as to seem like fiction. But someone did make this little piece of art, someone else traded or paid for it, someone wore it or displayed it for status or for religious reasons...these were real people, so long ago that we may have almost as much trouble imagining them as they would have had imagining us.

I hope you find this new section intriguing. I certainly do.