When I visited Montgomery, AL, just passing through, I found the Pecan "plant" the most interesting, and finding out about people that harvest pecans in the city and go there to sell them or for them to be cracked, maybe? I've never really liked museums, because they don't tell the whole story, and the stories they tell always feel reified, frozen. In any case, these stories are always told by "small elites," even though nowadays we have some "tiny elites" who try to "speak for those without voice," the silent majority. Still elites though. The pecan plant was alive. I have a bioarchaeologist daughter, and when she was "casing joints" to go to College, we went to Stanford University. There we meet Dr. Ian Hodder, who still is the Director of the Archaeology Program and of the Stanford Archaeology Center. In sum, an eminence in the field. He wrote the intro to the Archaeology section of the Stanford Bulletin, which starts with these words:
"Human beings and their ancestors have roamed the earth for at least five million years, but only invented writing five thousand years ago. And for most of the period since its invention, writing only tells us about small elite groups. Archaeology is the only discipline that gives direct access to the experiences of all members of all cultures, everywhere in the world. "
When I visited Montgomery, AL, just passing through, I found the Pecan "plant" the most interesting, and finding out about people that harvest pecans in the city and go there to sell them or for them to be cracked, maybe? I've never really liked museums, because they don't tell the whole story, and the stories they tell always feel reified, frozen. In any case, these stories are always told by "small elites," even though nowadays we have some "tiny elites" who try to "speak for those without voice," the silent majority. Still elites though. The pecan plant was alive. I have a bioarchaeologist daughter, and when she was "casing joints" to go to College, we went to Stanford University. There we meet Dr. Ian Hodder, who still is the Director of the Archaeology Program and of the Stanford Archaeology Center. In sum, an eminence in the field. He wrote the intro to the Archaeology section of the Stanford Bulletin, which starts with these words:
"Human beings and their ancestors have roamed the earth for at least five million years, but only invented writing five thousand years ago. And for most of the period since its invention, writing only tells us about small elite groups. Archaeology is the only discipline that gives direct access to the experiences of all members of all cultures, everywhere in the world. "