Monday, June 15, 2015

Archaeology and Murder News June 2015

Below is my occasional newsletter, reinvented to coincide with the debut of Burnt Siena ...


My newest novel, Burnt Siena, comes out this week (on June 17) from Five Star/Cengage Learning. It begins a new series (The Flora Garibaldi Art History Mysteries). Flora is a young paintings conservator, recently trained in Florence, Italy, who moves to Siena to take a new job with a firm of Italian painters and conservators. Anticipating a dream job using her advanced skills, she is disappointed when her employers sideline her doing menial tasks like mixing gesso and applying gold foil to picture frames. Then, a colleague is murdered and her new job takes her into dangerous territory: forging paintings and smuggling antiquities.
The book comes out simultaneously in Kindle and hardcover.
More murder news: I am re-reading Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter for her terrific descriptions and wonderful plots. She’s best known for her Brother Cadfael mysteries, but did you know she had several pseudonyms and wrote over 50 books total?
Other news: I had a blast teaching a course on “Archaeology and the Bible” at our local Osher Lifelong Learning center this past semester. A hundred students, ages 50-90, kept me challenged with fascinating questions and showed far more engagement than most undergraduates. The most outrageous site we discussed was the double palace and lake (complete with island) built by Herod the Great at Herodion.
More archaeology news:
Wine-making, anyone? Discovery of ancient pressing floor in Israel by a teen-ager walking her dog!
When I teach archaeology, I point out the obvious: I don’t look at all like Indiana Jones. But this fictional character has changed the world view of archaeology. Check out this new exhibit put on by National Geographic.

And last but not least, mummy news: Researchers continue to make new discoveries about health of Egyptians in ancient times through CT scans and other techniques. But animal mummies also provide surprises: many of them were fakes.