Naturalist, Adventurer, and Desert Ecologist Craig Childs Discusses & Signs Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession at the Main Library
This event is free and open to the public, but for guaranteed priority seating and a place in the signing line, please purchase Finders Keepers at Bookworks in advance (or online). Priority seating will begin at 6pm and at 6:45 all seating will be open to the public.
Presented by Bookworks and ABC Libraries: Bringing Books and People Together
Craig Childs (The Animal Dialogues) intermingles personal experiences as a desert ecologist and adventurer with a journalistic look at scientists, collectors, museum officials, and pot hunters to explore what should happen to ancient artifacts in his new book Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession (Little Brown, $24.99).
Questioning whether artifacts should be left in place, Childs argues that although surface surveys and electronic imaging permit study of buried objects without digging, that reliance on technology risks the loss of the "physical connection to the memory of ancient people." He mourns the loss of context that comes from removing, say, the Temple of Dendur from its natural environment, and he scrutinizes the "stewardship" of past archeologists who removed sacred objects when "no one thought indigenous cultures would survive to start demanding their things back," returns now required by U.S. law. Childs is critical of museum facilities inadequate to protect items that archeologists removed from their sites precisely to preserve them from destruction. He is also unhappy with the legal sale of relics to collectors, which he believes led to "more digging and smuggling." His own "collection" consists of finds he has left in place across the Southwest. But, he says, artifacts that cannot safely be left in place should go to museums. This is an engaging and thought-provoking look at one of the art and artifacts' world's most heated debates.
The New York Times Book Review piece on Finders Keepers is a great read, and explores Childs themes in comparison to those found in Willa Cather's novel The Professor's House.
"Reads almost like a thriller, chock-full of vendettas, suicides and large scale criminal enterprises dedicated to the multimillion-dollar trade in antiques." (NPR, Weekend All Things Considered)
Craig Childs is a writer who focuses on natural sciences, archaeology, and mind-blowing journeys into the wilderness. He has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books on nature, science, and adventure. He is a commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men's Journal, Outside and Orion. His subjects range from pre-Columbian archaeology to US border issues to the last free-flowing rivers of Tibet.
The expeditions Childs undertake often last weeks or months, informing his writing with a hard-earned sense of landscape and culture. The New York Times says "Childs's feats of asceticism are nothing if not awe inspiring: he's a modern-day desert father." He has been called a "born storyteller" by the New York Sun, and the LA Times says his writing is "like pure oxygen," and "stings like a slap in the face." He has won several key awards including the 2008 Galen Rowell Art of Adventure Award, the 2007 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award and the 2003 Spirit of the West Award for his body of work, an honor he shares with Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest Williams and N. Scott Momaday. Childs is an Arizona native, and grew up back and forth between there and Colorado. Now making a living as a writer, Childs lives off the grid with his wife and two young sons at the foot of the West Elk Mountains in Colorado.
- Street:
- Main LIbrary
- Additional:
- 501 Copper Ave Flying Star Pla
- City:
- Albuquerque ,
- Province:
- New Mexico
- Postal Code:
- 87107-3157
- Country:
- United States
