Raiders of the Lost Schmutz

So they found King Richard under a car park. Now that’s a dig. Back in the Jurassic when I trained as an archaeologist we did a field school in a parking lot. Filled with salady earnestness, I thought we’d discover something: The lurid tracings of Matthew Elliot’s slave cabins or Tecumseh’s moldering head—Essex County treasures just waiting to be unearthed. Instead we amassed a greenhorn’s cache of Styrofoam cups, nails, and broken glass. Turns out our slacker prof hadn’t applied for a field license. We were lucky we weren’t arrested or press-ganged to work the Scrambler on Boblo. Photo by P. E. Reid