A passion for the past : the odyssey of a transatlantic archaeologist / Ivor Noël Hume.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Noël Hume, Ivor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Noël Hume, Ivor.

Archaeologists--Great Britain--Biography.

Archaeologists.

Archaeologists--United States--Biography.

Excavations (Archaeology)--England--London.

Excavations (Archaeology).

Excavations (Archaeology)--Virginia.

Excavations (Archaeology)--Virginia--Williamsburg.

London (England)--Antiquities.

London (England).

Virginia--Antiquities.

Virginia.

Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, Va.)--Antiquities.

Colonial Williamsburg (Williamsburg, Va.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 350 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Ivor Noel Hume has devoted his life to uncovering countless lives that came before him. In "A Passion for the Past" the world-renowned archaeologist turns to his own life, sharing with the reader a story that begins amid the bombed-out rubble of post World War II London and ends on North Carolina s Roanoke Island, where the history of British America began. Weaving the personal with the professional, this is the chronicle of an extraordinary life steered by coincidence scarcely believable even as fiction. Born into the good life of pre-Depression England, Noel Hume was a child of the 1930s who had his silver spoon abruptly snatched away when the war began. By its end he was enduring a period of Dickensian poverty and clinging to aspirations of becoming a playwright. Instead, he found himself collecting antiquities from the shore of the river Thames and, stumbling upon this new passion, becoming an "accidental" archaeologist. From those beginnings emerged a career that led Noel Hume into the depths of Roman London and, later, to Virginia s Colonial Williamsburg, where for thirty-five years he directed its department of archaeology. His discovery of nearby Martin s Hundred and its massacred inhabitants is perhaps Noel Hume s best-known achievement, but as these chapters relate, it was hardly his last, his pursuit of the past taking him to such exotic destinations as Egypt, Jamaica, Haiti, and to shipwrecks in Bermuda. When the author began his career, historical archaeology did not exist as an academic discipline. It fell to Noel Hume s books, lectures, and television presentations to help bring it to the forefront of his profession, where it stands today. This story of a life, and a career, unlike any other reveals to us how the previously unimagined can come to seem beautifully inevitable."

Contents:

Cover; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; ACT ONE: In the Old World; 1. Off the Tumbrel; 2. Pour le Sport; 3. Poppet and Son; 4. Eggesford to Sutton Hoo; 5. Displaced Persons; 6. Yo-Yo Years; 7. Toward the Last All Clear; 8. Overture and Beginners; 9. Things That Went Bump; 10. Curtain Down; 11. Treasure from the Thames; 12. White Knights and Yellow Press; 13. Dead Birds and Stupid Statements; 14. A Bit o' the Old Roman; 15. Walbrook to Williamsburg; ACT TWO: In the New World; 16. Martinis, Bourbon, and Half-Read Plays; 17. Putting on a Show; 18. Lucy Locket and Martha Washington

19. Presidents and Pirates; 20. Virginia Is Forever; 21. National Geographic to the Rescue; 22. Bawn Again; 23. Following the Pharaohs; 24. A Museum for Wolstenholme Towne; 25. Handing the Baton; 26. Colonies Lost and Found; 27. Plunging to the Deep Ocean Floor in Bermuda; 28. Jamestown Discovered Yet Again; 29. A Really Big Party; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; J; K; L; M; N; O; P; Q; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y; Illustrations

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

1-283-60424-8

9786613916693

0-8139-2996-2

OCLC:

759159935