An Introduction

  How can we live without our lives? 

How will we know it’s us without our past? 

- John Steinbeck 

          Our 'modern' world is formed literally and figuratively out of everything that came before us. We say we can never know the past as it truly was. In truth we are the past- the sum of a thousand generations of experience and knowledge. It is the 'present' that holds a tenuous claim to reality.

          What we recognize as the tangible past: documents, artifacts, and places, are here because they have survived the ravages of time. Sometimes they have done so through care, but more often through carelessness. They are not, in themselves, 'the past', but they are keys to understanding. Mere objects when seen individually, viewed in context their relations to one another and to us weave a fabric of experience both fascinating and priceless. In these pages, I trace my encounters with these objects through my archaeological work and expanding forays into the world of museums and historic preservation.

          Ranging from centuries-old pipe stems to books, and from structures to whole landscapes, these artifacts have survived, often by pure chance, to become the physical remnants of our story. It is our duty to learn through these precious resources as well as to protect them. They are our accidental heritage.