Sharman Apt Russell lives with her husband and two children in Silver City, New Mexico. Her books include When the Land was Young: Reflections on American Archaeology (Addison-Wesley, 1996) , The Humpbacked Fluteplayer (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1994), Kill the Cowboy: A Battle of Mythology in the New West (Addison-Wesley, 1993,) and Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life in the Southwest (Addison-Wesley, 1991.) Her work has won the Mountain and Plains Regional Award, the Zia Award and a Pushcart Prize Award, among others. Her essays and stories appear in a number of anthologies and magazines, including Walking the Twilight (Northland Press, 1994), The Stories that Shape Us (Norton, 1995,) The Threepenny Reviw, The Massachusetts Review, The Missouri Review, and The North American Review.
Sharman's recent books include a collection of essays on botany, Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers (Perseus Books, 2001) and The Last Matriarch (University of New Mexico Press, 2000), a novel on paleolithic life in southern New Mexico, as well as When the Land was Young (reissued by University of Nebraska Press, 2001) and Kill the Cowboy: A Battle of Mythology in the New West (re-issued by University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
"An exciting portrait of archaelology today" - Publisher's Weekly
 |
"If you love travel in Amcrica - armchair or actual, across the land or thru time, into history and prehistory, thinking about the past and what it has to do with the future- this is your book. I couldn't stop reading."
- William Kittredge
Who owns the past? How much can we learn from artifacts? When did humans first enter North America? Who were the first North Americans? What can we know about them?
The way we treat the past speaks volumes about who we are at the present which is why Sharman Apt Russell's new book When the Land was Young: Reflections on American Archaeology (Addison-Wesley; June 20, 1996; $23.00), has garnered great interest from advance reviewers who have universally praised this unique book.
Stitching stories of our land - from the villages of the Hohokam people who lived in Arizona thousands of years ago to the intricate geometric works left in Ohio by the Hopewell Indians - together with the techniques and personalities of modern American archaeology, Russell offers a rare perspective on the world of archaeology, the nature of time, and the evolution of our species.
As Russell explains, American Archaeology is caught between the discipline of science and humanities as those in the field debate whether ancient sites should be seen as sources of data or as nonrenewable resources that should be left intact. Should we excavate and run the risk of desecrating Native American ruins or should we walk away from true science and our desire to take things apart to learn more?