{"id":3357,"date":"2015-10-11T19:54:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T09:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=3357"},"modified":"2015-10-12T07:52:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T21:52:48","slug":"times-anvil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=3357","title":{"rendered":"TIME’S ANVIL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Times-Anvil-201x300\"<\/a>This was another score from The Book Grocer. Also $6.00. Like Holloway<\/em>, it’s a hard cover,\u00a0 high quality publication from an English imprint (Weidenfeld and Nicholson) – and also right up my alley. While the sub-title does give the reader an idea of\u00a0 what it’s about,\u00a0 ‘England, Archaeology and the Imagination’ isn’t the most inviting description. It even sounds a bit stuffy and potentially dull. Or is that just me? I jumped on this, however, because I’d read a great review of it in 2012 when it first came out.<\/p>\n

The author is a distinguished British archaeologist, lecturer at various universities and an OBE for his services to archaeology. This book is a wonderful mash-up of memoir, biography, geography, history and poetry as well as an exploration of the archaeology of England.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example:<\/p>\n

On his very first professional dig, as a member of the team excavating underneath York Minster, Morris helped remove some Roman tiles. Apparently Roman tiles are a dime a dozen. But he took a close look.<\/p>\n

The tile bears a stamp: LEG IX HISP – <\/em>legio IX Hispana, the Ninth (Spanish) Legion. Near the stamp is the paw-mark of a dog that wandered across the tile stack before the tiles were fired. The mason and the dog lived around 1,780 years ago. In these plain traces they are so close. I remember a poem by D.H Lawrence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into<\/em>
\nare awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing <\/em>for long years.<\/em>
\nAnd for this reason, some old things are lovely<\/em>
\nwarm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.<\/em><\/p>\n

I wonder if there is a book like this about Australia? I’d love to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was another score from The Book Grocer. Also $6.00. Like Holloway, it’s a hard cover,\u00a0 high quality publication from an English imprint (Weidenfeld and Nicholson) – and also right up my alley. While the sub-title does give the reader … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3365,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions\/3365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}