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A memoir of travels by an eminent archaeologist and historian.

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´You must be very patient´, most everyone asserts admiringly on encountering an archaeologist. Patience in the pursuit of history instantly earns consideration. Patience to sift through the soil to discover treasure, from gold to unidentifiable knick-knacks - an educated beachcomber. But, patience does not come into it so much as the chemistry of experiences from being in the company of others as the five senses are provoked and satisfied by the buried unexpected.
Archaeology is about hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching past textures in our time. With these senses, in the company of friends, new places are created from old ones. Travel with archaeologist and writer Richard Hodges as he explores sites across the globe and ponders the relationship of the individual with the past and the present of the past in its ruins, monuments and traces of distant worlds and civilisations.

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List of Illustrations
Preface and acknowledgements
1. Introduction: An archaeologist´s sense of the past
Part 1 In the Company of Placemaking People
2. In Charles Newton´s Shadow: Searching for Demeter at Knidos
3. Wim van Es and the Discovery of the Dutch ´Troy´, Dorestad
4. Johnny Mitchell and San Vincenzo al Volturno´s First Saint
5. Riccardo and Quinto - Place-making at ´Lost´ Tuscan villages
6. Breakfast with Colin Renfrew
7. Reviewing Lisa Fentress at Alatri
8. With Giussy Nicolini where the Blue Begins
9. Remembering Albanian Heroines
Part 2 Finding the senses
Hearing
10. Boreal Butrint and its Golden Oriels
11. Sublimity: Hidden in the Togate´s Folds
12. Fireworks at Copán
Sight
13. Seeing beyond Sparta: Mistra
14. Sights and sanctuary at Saranda
15. Cavernous Spectacles of Colour: S. Michele at Olevano and the Crypt of the Original Sin
16. A Renaissance Dream House at Visegrád
Smell
17. The smell of the Desert: Doha and Al Zubarah
18. Smelling Spices in Sana´a
19. The Disturbing Scent of Gold - Rosia Montana, Transylvania
Taste
20. Tuscan Cooking Classes and S.Pietro d´Asso
21. Red Mullet and Retsina on Aegina
22. The taste of Key Lime Pie
Touch
23. Touching ´Gold´ in Gordion
24. In touch with Rome´s Ex-pat dead: Rome´s Non-Catholic Cemetery
25. Bunga bunga?
Index

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Hodges claims that he became an archaeologist "to travel to the past". Here is a wonderful and intriguing collection of his postcards from that journey. An insider´s view of archaeology for the curious! Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, Cambridge University, UK 20161118

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