{"id":49,"date":"2003-10-05T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-05T20:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=49"},"modified":"2011-08-22T12:15:49","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T18:15:49","slug":"bone-walker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=49","title":{"rendered":"Bone Walker"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have just finished Bone Walker<\/em>, by the prolific Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, last in a series of novels set among the Anasazi people of the Southwest in about the 13th century. It is the third of a series, actually, and in the words of the authors’ Web site<\/a>, “Bone Walker<\/em> ties all the threads woven in The Visitant<\/em> and The Summoning God<\/em> together.” <\/p>\n

The Gears used to be archaeologists. No doubt they got out of the profession due to its apparent high homicide rate, if we are to believe them, Tony Hillerman, Jake Page, and other writers. I always knew that archaeology was a high contentious and even vicious field; now we see that it is probably the most murderous corner of Academia.<\/p>\n

If you read Bone Walker<\/em>, personal knowledge or a map<\/a> of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, is essential.<\/p>\n

The interesting thing about the Gears’ novels is that they incorporate current archaeological thinking, e.g., how might the cannibalism documented by Arizona State University’s Christy Turner<\/a> have occurred? Was there really religious warfare between followers of the “kachina cult”<\/a> and other people?<\/p>\n

Frankly, I wonder if the religious-warfare angle is not overdrawn. It sounds too much like 16th-century Europe: “Die, Protestant dogs!” I like to think that people who did not have “holy scripture” telling them what to do would be more likely to go to war for the usual reasons–resource control, prestige–and less over dogma or the nature of the gods.<\/p>\n

For people who must spend a lot of time outdoors, the Gears do include some oddities. For instance, these Anasazi warriors skulking in Chaco Canyon are always trying to sneak from one town to the next in the “period of darkness between sunset and the rising of the New Moon.” Now think about that. One thing about us Pagans–we at least know when the Moon comes up.<\/p>\n

And one woman, the beautiful but deceitful Obsidian, she of the perfect full breasts, goes jogging down the Great North Road with the warriors. Did the Anasazi invent the sports bra?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have just finished Bone Walker, by the prolific Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, last in a series of novels set among the Anasazi people of the Southwest in about the 13th century. It is the third of a series, actually, and in the words of the authors’ Web site, “Bone Walker ties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,12],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-N","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":51,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=51","url_meta":{"origin":49,"position":0},"title":"Trudging Along with Baskets of Corn","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This Denver Post article on carrying corn to Chaco Canyon helps to illuminate the world of Bone Walker and the Gears' other Anasazi novels. (See entry for 28 September 2003.)NOTE: I do not know how long this link will be good, since the Denver Post does not make its archives\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1791,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1791","url_meta":{"origin":49,"position":1},"title":"Hot Baths and Battle Wounds among the Norse","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A summary of ancient Norse practices on personal hygiene, bathing, treatment of disease, and battle wounds. Both the saga literature and forensic studies of skeletal remains suggest that battle injuries could be horrific .... The femur (leg bone) shown to the right is from another man who died of battle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7986,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7986","url_meta":{"origin":49,"position":2},"title":"Not Ainu or Polynesian, Scientists Say of Kennewick Man","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Kennewick Man, the roughly 9,000-year-old skeleton found twenty years in Washington state was the subject of a long court battle between physical anthropologists and archaeologists who wanted to study him and contemporary tribes who wanted to claim him under NAGPRA rules. Suspiciously, the Corps of Engineers dumped rock and gravel\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"One reconstruction gave him a thick beard (Int. Business Times).","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/kennewick-man1-300x220.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1107,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1107","url_meta":{"origin":49,"position":3},"title":"Needed: Druids with Scuba Gear","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, the news of a possible stone circle under Lake Michigan has been \"surprisingly under-reported.\"If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old \u2013 coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6703,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6703","url_meta":{"origin":49,"position":4},"title":"Female Viking Warriors? A New Cinematic Arthur? And the Intern’s Tale","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Based on only six skeletons, some people are going crazy on Facebook, etc., about female Norse warriors. It's not that simple, says someone who read the original archaeology paper. But it's still interesting. \u00b6 Peg Aloi is a bit short of breath about a possible new film series on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=486","url_meta":{"origin":49,"position":5},"title":"Mutilating Pagan artVia The Cranky\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Mutilating Pagan artVia The Cranky Professor, I discovered Towards an Archaeology of Iconoclasm, a blog devoted to early Christian campaign to destroy or at least any earlier art that suggested connection to Pagan thought. The writer is a Danish graduate student in archaeology, Troels Myrup Kristensen. The thesis will attempt\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3121,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/3121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}