Why am I passionate about this?

When I applied to college, I thought I’d study science and pursue my passions for art and justice separately. Then, I went to Kenya for my first excavation and found that archaeology combined my love for storytelling, data analysis, and making the world a better, safer, more inclusive place. As much as I love movies like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, I never saw myself in them. They just don’t capture what I love about archaeology! Now, my research—like this list—is dedicated to really understanding what makes archaeology so compelling, so rewarding, and most capable of telling nuanced stories that make us think differently about our past.


I wrote...

Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

By Allison Mickel,

Book cover of Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

What is my book about?

Archaeology has uncovered incredible monuments and made groundbreaking discoveries, but who actually shovels the dirt, pushes the wheelbarrows, and guards…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life

Allison Mickel Why did I love this book?

This was one of the first archaeology books I was assigned when I started studying archaeology, and I only appreciate it more and more with time. I don’t think there is any book the captures so well the fact that real archaeologists actually learn much more from everyday, mundane objects—rather than from the monuments and treasures that archaeology in the movies is all about. 

I still remember, too, the moment this book made it ‘click’ for me that archaeology often reveals secrets that contradict the written record. A plantation owner might say, for instance, that they designed and built their house, but they can’t hide the existence of the front porch and other traces of African architectural and construction techniques.

My copy of this book is riddled with nearly 20-year-old post-it notes, each one representing an epiphany for a budding archaeologist just ahead of her first summer of excavation.

By James Deetz,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked In Small Things Forgotten as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A fascinating study of American life and an explanation of how American life is studied through the everyday details of ordinary living, colorfully depicting a world hundreds of years in the past.

History is recorded in many ways. According to  author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten.  Objects such as doorways, gravestones, musical  instruments, and even shards of pottery fill in the  cracks between large historical events and depict the intricacies of daily life. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added…


Book cover of Stonehenge: Making Space

Allison Mickel Why did I love this book?

I read this book at a time when I was feeling dissatisfied with archaeological writing’s ability to capture the feeling of being at an archaeological site—all of the sensory experiences and historical enigma.

I loved that much of this book was written as a series of dialogues that actually took place while walking around Stonehenge. I also love that this text looks directly at different people’s thoughts and experience of the site, and allowed those contestations and disagreements to remain unresolved.

To me, this book felt like the uncertain social experience of finding so much, and yet never enough, through the archaeological process.

By Barbara Bender,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stonehenge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book is an imaginative exploration of a place that has fascinated, intrigued and perplexed visitors for centuries. Instead of seeing Stonehenge as an isolated site, the author sets the stones within a wider landscape and explores how use and meaning have changed from prehistoric times right through to the present. Throughout the millennia, the Stonehenge landscape has been used and re-used, invested with new meanings, and has given rise to myths and stories. The author creatively explores how the landscape has been appropriated and contested, and invokes the debates and experiences of people who have very different and often…


Ad

Book cover of She Who Comes Forth

She Who Comes Forth by Audrey Driscoll,

October 1962. Recently turned 21, France Leighton travels to Luxor, Egypt, taking with her two legacies—an antique cello and an emerald ring. Instead of the archaeological adventure she expects, she gets a lecherous dig director, hidden agendas, and an enigmatic nuclear physicist.

After a risky balloon cruise ends in a…

Book cover of Dug to Death: A Tale of Archaeological Method and Mayhem

Allison Mickel Why did I love this book?

I was still seeking examples of creative, fun writing in archaeology that captured some of the heart and joy of archaeological fieldwork when I encountered this humorous murder mystery-cum-archaeological methods textbook.

Reading it, I learned a lot about research design, different decisions archaeologists make while working, and various social and financial pressures that might impact the pace and approach of a project. But it’s also packed with silliness and dad jokes.

I still text inside jokes with people I excavated with more than a decade ago; this book captures both the complexities of doing archaeology as well as the inevitable goofiness that arises out of living, digging, and sweating with a group of people for weeks or months.

By Adrian Praetzellis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dug to Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dr. Hannah Green-heroine of Praetzellis's textbook-as-novel Death by Theory-has really gotten herself into trouble this time. The spunky archaeologist has been asked to manage the contract archaeology project at a historic site in New Zealand when the regular archaeological staff of University of Invercargill abruptly dies off. On the scene, Hannah discovers she needs to teach her team about research design, survey methods, archival research, professional ethics, curation, and especially field safety, if they are to complete the contract before young Mr. Wallace levels the site in favor of a golf course. With a cast of characters that includes Missy-Jojo-the-Dog-Faced-Girl…


Book cover of Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society

Allison Mickel Why did I love this book?

This book is one of my absolute favorites for expressing how archaeology really works on a macro level. As a student, I learned that archaeology has often been co-opted to serve political and nationalist purposes.

But the hows and whys of that process weren’t clear until I started doing archaeology. I love how Nadia Abu El Haj makes extremely clear why archaeology as a science lends itself so well to solidifying claims about identity, history, and land. I really admire how Abu El Haj captures what happens between the direct, tangible encounter of a person with an artifact and the abstract, national level of narrative construction and policymaking.

By Nadia Abu El-Haj,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Facts on the Ground as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Archaeology in Israel is truly a national obsession, a practice through which national identity-and national rights-have long been asserted. But how and why did archaeology emerge as such a pervasive force there? How can the practices of archaeology help answer those questions? In this stirring book, Nadia Abu El-Haj addresses these questions and specifies for the first time the relationship between national ideology, colonial settlement, and the production of historical knowledge. She analyzes particular instances of history, artifacts, and landscapes in the making to show how archaeology helped not only to legitimize cultural and political visions but, far more powerfully,…


Ad

Book cover of Suddenly that Summer

Suddenly that Summer by Lori Handeland,

Set during the same tumultuous era as The Women1967: They called it the Summer of Love...

For small-town Wisconsin siblings Billy and Jay Johnson, it’s a summer of change, confusion, and self-discovery. 

From the voice of New York Times bestselling author Lori Handeland, a heartfelt, coming-of-age story that…

Book cover of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail

Allison Mickel Why did I love this book?

This book, for me, is something of a guiding star. It is profound, scientific, powerful, and directly applicable to contemporary debates about policy, governance, and justice. Archaeology isn’t just about collecting objects; instead, most archaeologists I know are deeply invested in how archaeology can help inform the decisions we make in the present. MacArthur “genius” award winner Jason de Leon shows the full potential of this in this book, where he combines archaeological, ethnographic, and forensic methods to reveal the impact of immigration policy on real human bodies and families.

Maybe it’s cheating to include this book on this list; it isn’t just how archaeology works—it has set a new standard for archaeologists to make contributions that are relevant and resonant enough to make a change in the world.

By Jason De Leon,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Land of Open Graves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In his gripping and provocative debut, anthropologist Jason De Leon sheds light on one of the most pressing political issues of our time-the human consequences of US immigration policy. The Land of Open Graves reveals the suffering and deaths that occur daily in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona as thousands of undocumented migrants attempt to cross the border from Mexico into the United States. Drawing on the four major fields of anthropology, De Leon uses an innovative combination of ethnography, archaeology, linguistics, and forensic science to produce a scathing critique of "Prevention through Deterrence," the federal border enforcement policy that…


Explore my book 😀

Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

By Allison Mickel,

Book cover of Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent: A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor

What is my book about?

Archaeology has uncovered incredible monuments and made groundbreaking discoveries, but who actually shovels the dirt, pushes the wheelbarrows, and guards the site after the research team leaves? At many archaeological sites around the world, local workers are hired to perform the manual labor of the archaeological excavation. They develop skills and expertise in archaeology from doing this work. And yet, the names and identities of these site workers have rarely been recorded or published, leaving their contributions to archaeology unrecognized.

In my book, you’ll meet many of these workers. They’ll share the expertise and knowledge they’ve gained from decades of experience in archaeology, and their stories will reveal some reasons why their perspectives have been left out of so much of archaeology's history.

Book cover of In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life
Book cover of Stonehenge: Making Space
Book cover of Dug to Death: A Tale of Archaeological Method and Mayhem

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,888

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 You might also like…

Book cover of The Atrahasis Epic: A Sumerian tale of irrigation, floods, and the creation of man

The Atrahasis Epic by Ken Goudsward,

Contrary to popular belief, the Atrahasis Epic is not merely a flood myth. In some ways it can be called a creation myth. However, it does not concern itself with the creation of the universe or even of the earth. Rather, the created work in question is one of culture…

Book cover of Those People Behind Us

Those People Behind Us by Mary Camarillo,

Those People Behind Us is set in the summer of 2017, post-Trump election and pre-pandemic. The story takes place in the fictional city of Wellington Beach, California, a suburban coastal town increasingly divided by politics, protests, and escalating housing prices. These divisions change the lives of five neighbors--a real estate…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in archaeology, the USA Mexico border, and Virginia?

Archaeology 136 books
Virginia 118 books