Fort Eustis Cultural Resources Department

09/01/2026

SEES BEHIND TREES by Michael Dorris is a middle-grade book set in precontact North America at an unspecified time and in an unspecified place. Professional reviews keep saying it’s the sixteenth century and some say Virginia. The Virginia part has support from the text, because the village leader is called a weroance. (Though really it should be weroansqua, as it’s a woman.) The author also credits Helen Rountree’s work, especially THE POWHATAN INDIANS OF VIRGINIA, and recommends it for more information about the people in the story. It must be no earlier than about 1000 years ago, because it takes place after maize began to be cultivated in Virginia, but there’s nothing to specify a time within that. Maybe reviewers were using “sixteenth-century” as a way to indicate it’s shortly before European contact, but there’s really nothing within the book to indicate this.

Walnut is very nearsighted. His mother tries to teach him to shoot arrows, but he can’t see what he’s shooting at. Then she realizes he knows things via his other senses. For instance, he can tell when someone is coming and who it is by the sound of their footsteps. Using this talent, he gets out of the shooting requirement to become a man (no huskanaw ceremony among these people) and receives the adult name Sees Behind Trees.

Sees Behind Trees has a slightly rocky start to adult life. After he helps find a missing sewing needle, mainly by asking the right questions, everyone admires him and he lets it go to his head. Eventually his relative set him straight and he realizes that becoming a man isn’t an instant change. He ponders what it means to be grown up and has some interesting thoughts.

Gray Fire, the weronasqua’s brother, tells Sees Behind Trees of a place he’d stumbled upon once years ago, “the land of water,” whose beauty still haunts him. He’s never been able to find it again, but he invites Sees Behind Trees to accompany him on another search, hoping SBT’s talents will lead to success.

On the evening of the first day of their trip, Gray Fire and Sees Behind Trees encounter a strange couple, Karna and Pitew, and their baby Checha, and share their camp for the night. Karna and Pitew speak a different language. The amazing thing is that Sees Behind Trees has not only never seen anyone from outside his village before, he always thought “strangers” were mythical creatures. It might have been believable that, as a still very young person, he’d never met people from another tribe, but how do these people never see anyone outside their village? That’s unrealistic.

The two travelers find the land of water, and Gray Fire rushes toward it. Sees Behind Trees can’t see what happens to him, but he disappears somehow, and Sees Behind Trees must make his own way home using what Gray Fire taught him to find the way. He comes across Karna and Pitew’s camp and finds it burned and abandoned. The couple had earlier indicated that there was something bad to the south, and it seems whatever that was has caught up with them. Baby Checha was hidden in the leaves, so Sees Behind Trees takes him along back to his village.

Despite the author indicating that some research went into this book, there are some strange inaccuracies. Sees Behind Trees’s village being so isolated, for one. Also, Sees Behind Trees helps his father repair their house, and later, when thinking about how much he still doesn’t know, he mentions he doesn’t know how to build a house. Isn’t housebuilding (and repair) women’s work? Helen Rountree points this out. https://www.jstor.org/stable/483170?seq=12 Also, Sees Behind Trees and his father use bundled grass to cover the house. Not mats? Gray Fire’s house has mats. Gray Fire also lives alone, which is odd, both he and his sister have never married, also unusual in this type of society, and at the end the weroansqua says she doesn’t know how to hold a baby. Has she somehow never been exposed to any of the village children? Has she never worked or socialized in a group of women? It seems like the author didn’t completely think through what it would actually be like to live in a society that’s structured differently from modern Western ones, which is, unfortunately, not an uncommon problem.

Nitpicks aside, this is a good book. Sees Behind Trees is an appealing character, and kids (or adults) can benefit from getting a glimpse into his world and hearing his thoughts on what makes an adult.

Helen C. Rountree, Powhatan Indian Women: The People Captain John Smith Barely Saw, Ethnohistory, Vol. 45, No. 1, Winter, 1998

08/03/2026

BOG FASHION by Nicole DeRushie is about clothing in the Bronze and Iron Ages in northern Europe. The examples of garments covered in the book were preserved in bogs, hence the title. While it covers some archaeological information, the real aim of the book is to aid in the recreation of these clothes.

The first part of the book is about ancient clothing and how we can know about it (besides clothes that survived in bogs, there are written descriptions and artistic depictions from the Romans). It then goes into what materials it was made of, weaving patterns such as twill, and what colors it was dyed and what plants those dyes were made of.

The second half gets into the actual clothing. Each subsection covers a type of garment, with an archaeological example shown, then a modern recreation. Clothes include tunics (made in an ingenious zero-waste way, with minimal seams too!), skirts, pants, cloaks, even shoes. Also a birchbark hat, which, if you’re familiar with border ballads, may remind you of the Wife of Usher’s Well, whose sons’ hats “were o’ the birk.”

If you want to not only make your own clothes but make them with period-appropriate tools, this book has you covered. You can make a bone needle, you can dye your own fabric, and this book will guide you. It also covers how to do several kinds of sewing stitches.

This book is obviously, though probably unconsciously, aimed at European readers/makers. Since that’s where the original clothes come from, it’s not surprising. If you’re in other parts of the world things like the plants used for dyeing are not going to be local, and the discussion of using blackthorn thorns as cloak pins is not going to feel very relevant to you.

There’s probably a reason why historical costumers don’t go for Iron Age clothes the way they do for medieval or eighteenth-century. These clothes are not that exciting and don’t look that stylish to modern eyes. They’ll keep you warm and protected from the elements, but they’re kind of shapeless and baggy. Fitting is done by folding the fabric around the body, or maybe using a drawstring. Fabric was too valuable to cut unnecessarily – you might need that extra length if you grow or gain weight, and unshaped fabric is easy to use as a completely different item if needs change. Wrapped skirt during the day, blanket at night.

The focus is on the making of specific clothes, not on everything there is to know about clothing in this period. There are some interesting tidbits not directly related to the making that are mentioned but not really discussed. One example: fabric to make Bronze Age clothing was more likely to be cut into pattern pieces than later Iron Age clothes, which, as mentioned above, were roughly shaped and then gathered or folded around the wearer. The Bronze Age was closer to a time when people were wearing skin clothing that had to be cut and shaped, so it was the way they were used to thinking about sewing. Woven fabric requires a lot more labor to produce than animal skins, so you can see why people would be reluctant to cut or damage it any more than necessary. Another example is that plant-based fibers don’t survive in bogs the way animal-based fibers do, so the famous Tollund Man bog body may have originally been wearing more than a belt and a hat.

Clothing is a type of ancient material culture that often gets overlooked because of how rarely it survives. This book brings it to life.

07/01/2026

THE WHITE STAG by Kate Seredy is a rare example of fiction set (sort of) among steppe nomads, but it’s also old (1937), admits that it’s not based on facts, is not that gripping, and is kind of weird. It’s supposedly for kids and won the Newbery Award, but it doesn’t seem much like a kids’ book. Children in 1937 must have had different tastes.

This is a story of how the Hungarians came to settle in Hungary. It starts off with Ni**od, the mighty hunter from the Bible, whose sons left months ago to chase a white stag and haven’t returned yet. He sacrifices his horse to the god Hadur and there are signs involving eagles that he interprets as his sons succeeding him and then a great champion arising. The sons, Hunor and Magyar, return, and Ni**od dies. The sons lead the people westward to the land the stag showed them.

While out hunting, Hunor and Magyar come across Moonmaidens (sort of like fairies) dancing in the twilight and “capture” them (they come willingly) to be their wives. Hunor and his wife have a son, Bendeguz.

When Bendeguz is fifteen, drought comes to the region and the people must move on. During the time they’ve lived in this place, the people have divided into two groups, depending on which leader they prefer, so now they call themselves Huns and Magyars. The Huns are more interested in battle than the Magyars. Led by Bendeguz, the Huns sweep from Asia, leaving a trail of destruction behind them, into Europe. They settle down again, but now they have rich plunder and slaves from their exploits.

Bendeguz meets Alleeta, a girl from a related (but now enslaved) people, the Cimmerians. Upon discovering that they have the same story as the Huns of a white eagle leading them westward, he frees the Cimmerians and eventually marries Alleeta. Their son is Attila.

Ever since Ni**od everyone has known that one day Attila will be born and will be a great warrior who will lead them to their promised land. Even when Attila is a small child, Bendeguz carries him into battle as the Huns fight their way across eastern Europe. Eventually, when Attila is grown up, they can’t advance any farther because of mountains in their way. Then the white stag reappears to lead them through a hidden pass into the land they’ve been waiting for. Now they’re set to live happily ever after.

Is this a book you’d be excited to read? There’s not much plot other than that the people are fated to move ever westward, there’s basically no character development, and there’s very little dialogue. On the other hand, it’s very short, so if you don’t like it at least you won’t suffer long. Reviewers often refer to its “lyrical prose,” so if that kind of thing is important to you, you might like it. There are also a lot of good illustrations. It doesn’t really line up with what we expect from books almost a hundred years after it was written, but it’s still worth a look for people who know what they’re getting into.

06/05/2026

We found this yesterday while monitoring one of our sites. It's a blue triangular bottle marked "McCormick & Co. Balto" and at the bottom, "Patent Applied For." This bottle once contained laudanum, an addictive but widely used drug, and the unusual color and shape were intended to keep it from being mistaken for a more benign substance. This particular bottle dates from sometime between 1890, when McCormick began manufacturing this type of bottle, and 1902, when the patent was obtained.

06/01/2026

BURIAL GROUND by Malcolm Shuman involves an archaeologist and a mystery. The archaeological angle is critical to the story, but overall it’s mostly a mystery.

Alan Graham is the owner of a small contract archaeology company in Louisiana in the late 1990s. The time period isn’t that important, but occasionally there are mentions of something like Alan signing paper paychecks that remind you it’s not taking place today. But people do have cell phones. Alan also has some dated attitudes along the lines of women being mysterious creatures he can’t understand.

Alan is hired to survey some land, where there are rumors of a second Tunica Treasure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunica_treasure), a cache of artifacts from the Tunica tribe. Soon after hiring Alan, the landowner is killed in what looks at first glance like a car accident, but there are some questionable aspects, not least of which is that there’s an extra tooth in the car that can’t possibly have come from his mouth. The landowner’s son still wants Alan to complete the survey.

Complicating Alan’s life is that there’s a new archaeologist in town, P.E. Courtney, who comes from New England, fresh from her Ph.D. She wants to collaborate with Alan, but he sees her as an unwelcome competitor. Still, they’re drawn together into the mystery of the rumored treasure and the suspicious death.

There are various incidents and accidents and strange characters in the area. Alan’s coworker David is missing overnight and then is found in the woods with a broken leg. Alan and P.E. are attacked by an unseen assailant in the woods who throws branches and logs at them. The previous owner of Alan’s client’s land is weird and obsessed with the idea that the local nuclear plant caused his wife’s cancer. A native youth resents Alan’s existence, or at least his profession. All (or at least most) of these come together in the end for a satisfying resolution to both the archaeological inquiry and the murder mystery.

05/08/2026

05/01/2026

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL ADVENTURES OF I.V. JONES by Heidi Roberts is about the early life of archaeologist I.V. “Ivy” Jones, whom we previously met (at a later point in her life) in THE PAST IS MURDER (https://www.facebook.com/CRMFtEustis/posts/pfbid0ckESGJDiNEaJ2hPWTsaRcGGHQ68zuvkWSwvKfG2KGxjgBTkfVkayhyh73CnL6Jdbl). This book is about Ivy’s entrance into the archaeological field in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Ivy is a student at Utah College who just needs a field school to graduate with a degree in anthropology. Unfortunately the gatekeeper for the field school is Dr. Maxwell Johnson, who is sexist and so difficult to work with that people call him the Dark Lord. (He’s probably based on archaeologist Jesse Jennings.) Ivy makes it into field school, where she witnesses Johnson dismiss the ideas of a female graduate student, but she successfully completes field school and starts working in the then-new field of cultural resources management archaeology.

CRM archaeology in Utah in the seventies seems a lot wilder and more dangerous than it would (hopefully) be today. The crews routinely camp in the middle of nowhere for a week, and once Ivy and a coworker have to spend the night camped by their vehicle which is stranded on a washed-out road running down a steep slope. They climb up rocky cliffs where it seems like one misstep is going to end up with someone having to be carried miles back to the vehicle with a broken ankle. Luckily nothing happens to Ivy, though a coworker confesses to having an urge to jump off a cliff. Notable to eastern archaeologists, Ivy and her coworkers spend their time surveying for sites by hiking endlessly and seeing artifacts on the ground, or sometimes in caves. No digging required.

Ivy encounters a variety of humanity as coworkers. She works with a supposedly reformed pothunter (who later turns out to not be so reformed), people who have no experience and don’t know what they’re doing, people who let their biased expectations dictate what they find, and people who are threatened by her competence exceeding their own. Sexism permeates everything, maybe not quite to the degree of Alice Kehoe’s GIRL ARCHAEOLOGIST, but still incredibly bad by today’s standards. Since Ivy lives in that time, she just accepts it as the way things are. She objects to academic sidelining of women’s ideas but powers through sleazy bosses and coworkers.

Eventually Ivy tires of walking around outside all the time and gets a job at the Land Management Agency, which is more office-based, though she has to work with a boss who has no boundaries and has several girlfriends plus a wife. She attends a meeting of the Society for American Archaeology with the boss and a girlfriend (one of the few times the SAAs appear in fiction). Like the rest of Ivy’s world, the SAAs are also more unhinged than they are today, with random nudity and naked hot-tubbing after hours.

Eventually Ivy decides to go to graduate school, and the book ends with her hopeful for the future.

The author states that she experienced archaeology much as Ivy does, which may be why it doesn’t feel like there’s an overarching plot to the book. Ivy moves along through life and that is the story. Although the book isn’t presented as someone looking back at her past, once or twice Ivy speaks to the reader with knowledge she can’t have yet at the time. Most notable is “user -friendly laptops were only a glimmer in Steve Job’s [sic] eye” (p. 172).

As part of Ivy’s adventures, there are little nuggets of information scattered unobtrusively through the story, explaining things like archaeological features and dendrochronology in an unobtrusive way. In a more subtly educational way, events in the story also showcase the damage looting does to archaeology.

This is not the most exciting book about archaeology, but it’s an interesting look at a time in the history of archaeology. It’s nice to see non-academic archaeology depicted so thoroughly, and authenticity somewhat makes up for the plot shortcomings.

04/22/2026

Calling all archaeologists! Any ideas what this could be?

Our staff found this mystery object while performing a monitoring visit to a site that was recently subjected to a controlled burn (hence the charring on the outside of the object), and we are stumped as to what it is. There appear to be metal components inside the glass underneath the white circular part, and the base in the ground looks like a metal lid. (Note that we did not touch it to get a closer look as there is a risk that it is an unexploded ordinance).

If anyone has any insight, let us know in the comments!

04/01/2026

STRONG HEART by Charlie Sheldon is this month’s book.

Tom is preparing to go on a camping trip in Olympic National Park with his indigenous friends William and Myra. While they’re packing, his ex-wife shows up with a granddaughter Tom never knew existed. (His ex-wife had custody of their daughter, who ran away from home at 15.) The granddaughter, Sarah, acts like a stereotypical sullen teenager who does NOT want to go on this trip, but, after some debate among the original campers, Tom decides to take her. He’s going to tend his grandfather’s grave, and it’s important.

At the park, they encounter surveyors for Buckhorn, a mining company that has mineral rights to the area where Tom’s grandfather is buried. Once they’re deeper in the wilderness, Tom shows his friends a carved atlatl that his grandfather had given him, which he wants to leave at the grave. Tom isn’t sure if his grandfather found this himself, or if his own grandfather had given it to him, and he isn’t sure exactly where it came from. The surveyors pass by their camp, and they may have seen the atlatl. If so, the group knows they’ll want to suppress any knowledge of it in case the existence of an archaeological site would derail their mining plans. Sarah, who is an artist, sees a bear in the woods, but when she shows the group her drawing of the bear Myra identifies it as a short-faced bear, which has been extinct since the ice age.

Then Sarah disappears and is missing for a week. Tom et al. refuse to stop searching even after official search and rescue efforts end, though he doesn’t really expect to find her alive. And then she reappears during a thunderstorm, injured in several ways, including missing part of her little finger. She relates an amazing story: while she was gone, she woke up on a shore somewhere and was captured, along with six other similar-aged girls. Their captors took them to trade for obsidian (“razor stone”) with a group who periodically came to trade for wives. Sarah, soon called Strong Heart by her new people, traveled by giant canoe (something like those used among Northwest Coast peoples in recent centuries) for months. Along the way she learned to throw with an atlatl and became quite proficient. Unfortunately the travelers suffered a series of misfortunes, both from predators and from each other jockeying for position. Just as they were about to arrive at their home, Sarah returned to the modern world, led by a short-faced bear.

Back in the present day, Tom and Myra are skeptical of Sarah’s story (William is more inclined to take things like visions seriously), but they focus on healing her injuries and getting things back to normal. Sarah has to return to her grandmother’s house, but a few months later she runs away to get away from her step-grandfather, and the gang returns to the wilderness to try to retrieve the atlatl (lost during the first adventure). But the Buckhorn employees are back too, and they won’t let an artifact stand in the way of their plans…

The story is intriguing and keeps you engaged. It would have been nice to get a little more into the heads of the main characters. It feels like there’s always some distance between the reader and the viewpoint character. It’s also disappointing that Sarah leaves the past just as they’re reaching her new people’s home. It would have been interesting to see how they lived when they weren’t traveling.

The author seems to have written this book partly to advance the coastal migration hypothesis (that humans moved along the coast from Siberia into North America rather than entering the Americas through an ice-free corridor from Beringia). Sarah’s journey, the group decides, probably started in Kamchatka and ended up in Washington state. In an afterword the author talks about having thought about this idea for decades (he worked in the Pacific Northwest with tribes and with sea-related matters). By this point in time, this idea is fairly well accepted by archaeologists. The public awareness of ideas often lags behind the archaeological community, but fiction is an effective way of getting ideas out there (for good or ill, depending on whether the ideas are serious science or crackpot pseudoarchaeology). The author also clearly knows what he’s talking about when it comes to sailing in the northern Pacific and traveling through the forest.

There are a few strange ideas, mainly that the Pacific Northwest was where modern humanity began. The characters talk about early humans mixing with Neandertals and Denisovans (and some of Strong Heart’s fellow captives seem to be coded as Neandertals, described as having heavy bones and red hair). This lets William and Myra be right that their ancestors came from the same place they still live and their people have always been there, but it’s a muddled version of the real data. Modern humans did interbreed with Neandertals and Denisovans, but not, as far as we know, all together in the greater Beringia region. In fact, to date no Neandertal remains have been found that far east. This is a minor point in the book, though.

There are other fictional depictions of populating the Americas, but not like this one. It’s worth a look.