Texas Archeologist "Wrote the Book" on the Improbable
Fred Wendorf really hates being compared to Indiana Jones. For a serious scientist who has devoted his life to breaking down archeological barriers and preserving history, being likened to a two-dimensional movie character is not that flattering.
But Wendorf has been a magnet for adventure, which comes across loud and clear in his new book, Desert Days: My Life as a Field Archaeologist, published by Southern Methodist University Press. From New Mexico to the Nile Valley, Wendorf has taken great joy in doing what other scientists said couldn't, or shouldn't, be done. And if that sounds like a movie hero, so be it.
The story of this Terrell, Texas native and Southern Methodist University emeritus professor begins and almost ends on a battlefield in Italy during World War II, where shrapnel wounds destroyed nerves in his right arm and rendered it almost useless. He spent two years in Army hospitals before returning to the University of Arizona, determined to become an archeologist.
However, Wendorf was reluctant to sign up for the archaeology field school because he thought his bad arm would make him a liability on-site. "I soon learned that despite my war injuries I could dig with a pick and shovel, and I could do it well," Wendorf writes. He would not put down that pick and shovel for the next four decades:
a.. Wendorf is the father of what is now known as "salvage archeology." His lengthy excavation just steps ahead of an El Paso Natural Gas pipeline in 1950 set the standard for preserving archeological remains at a time when post-war construction was turning massive amounts of dirt. "People started thinking abut the destruction that was occurring every time America built a bridge, a roadway or a pipeline," Wendorf says.
a.. He shrugged off the low expectations of other archeologists in 1961 to study the area soon to be flooded by the Aswan Dam on the Nile River. His work opened the doors to the prehistory of the area when few were interested in what occurred before the time of the Pharoahs. The British Museum acquired Wendorf's eventual collection of six million Nile Valley artifacts in 2001.
a.. Wendorf's crew found a group of 58 skeletons in 1965 at Jebel Sahaba in present-day Egypt that calibrated radio carbon dating has proved to be 14,700 years old. The bones bore signs of extreme violence, providing evidence of the earliest organized warfare in prehistoric times.
Wendorf is Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory Emeritus in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences at SMU. He is revered at the Dallas university for his excavation of the old U.S. Cavalry outpost at Fort Burgwin, N.M. that eventually became home to the satellite campus, SMU-in-Taos and its archaeology field school.
Copies are available through Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Days-Life-Field-Archaeologist/dp/0870745247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233954915&sr=1-1
Barnes & Noble, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Desert-Days/Fred-Wendorf/e/9780870745249/?itm=4
Borders, http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0870745247
Contact Kim Cobb
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