Finding the Lost Cities

This book of archaeology's greatest hits is aimed at young adults, but it would be hard to imagine readers with a general interest in the science not taking to this large-size book with its plentiful illustrations, photographs and maps. Because while Rebecca Stefoff tells the familiar stories, advances have always been made at these sights, so each of the 13 essays contain a familiar ring of the old shot through with conclusions drawn from the latest research. And the stories themselves never lose their charge. Heinrich Schliemann's inspired use of Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey to locate Troy still has the power to enthrall, even as we deplore the methods he used along the way -- smuggling the gold treasures out of Turkey -- as well as the damage he did in excavating the site. Convinced that Homer's Troy was found at the bottom of the site, he carted away layer after layer of unsifted rubble to get there. As it turned out, Troy was older than even he suspected, and he ended up destroying that layer. The history of archaeology is full of stories like these: Arthur Evans rebuilding the Minoan city of Knossos according to his idea of what they should have looked like (critics call his reconstruction "concrete Crete"); Colorado rancher Richard Wetherill exploring the pubelos once occupied by the Anasazis, carting off thousands of relics to sell to museums; archeologists in general denying that Africans were responsible for building Great Zimbabwe in order to fulfill their notions of white supremacy. But "Finding the Lost Cities" points out that time cannot support a story that is false, and that the truth, eventually, is sifted out.