My apologies for thesilence. I’ve been too busy bicycling to blog. The Lofotens were spectacularand we were blessed with superb weather on all but one of the six days. Onewore layers as protection against the fiendish cold winds, the bicyclist’scurse. Except for the headwinds, the riding was fabulous—windy roads androlling terrain—what our leaders euphemistically called “rolling hills” whenthey were often small mountains. The islands were once a remote place where codwere harvested in winter, dried in spring and early summer, and then exportedin a trade that goes back to medieval times. Gadus morhua was the Norse beef jerky: we tried it and I loved it.The fishing villages still exist, but have been sanitized by modernity. Theweather beaten fishing cabins have now become summer homes and hotels—we sleptin bunk beds in modernized cabins that were simple, yet adequate enough to cooka feast for eight people. Despite the modernization, the cod industry is stillaround you. Gone are the small double-ended boats of yesteryear, but woodendiesel powered fishing craft are still commonplace. Stark, empty cod racksstand on exposed outcrops, ready for next year’s catch. And several museumstell the story of cod fishing, with techniques that are almost unchanged frommedieval times-except for the boats. They are wonderful rummage warehouses ofsimple technologies that survived until the middle of the last century,sometimes even later. We were able to go behind the scenes at the restoredfishing village of Nusafjord, wherewe saw piles of equipment abandoned from earlier times, also stacks of cod fromthis year’s harvest waiting to be shipped out. Everywhere sticklike carcasses,light as feathers that you could throw across the room without damage, gradedaccording to criteria set up centuries ago. It’s heartening to see theexpertise of the past still being used today.

The flight from LA toLondon seems interminable, especially if you’re used to the routine. Take off,a drink, dinner, try to sleep, a bleary-eyed breakfast an hour out of Heathrow,then jet lag to stagger creation. Sometimes the aftermath is almost surrealist.I remember landing years ago early one summer morning, renting a car, thendriving some two hours later down a narrow country land on a gorgeous June morning. The transition was so bizarre, so extreme, that I burst out laughing at the sheer joy of life. They say that travel wears thin with age and I tendto agree, having had a surfeit of business travel over the past year. But thereare magical moments and I hope this trip will have plenty of them.

A rare journey thisone, devoted to entirely to pleasure. Three days in England in Aldeburgh,Suffolk, on the East Coast, seeing friends and (trying) to overcome jet lag.Tomorrow will bring the pleasure of a highly technical conversation aboutweather helm in a Caledonia Yawl with a yacht designer friend and dinner withsome old African acquaintances of more years ago then I care to remember. Thenon to Oslo, and the highlight—5 ½ days bicycling in Norway’s Lofoten Islands,north of the Arctic Circle.

Why the LofotenIslands, people have asked? I’m tempted to respond with the classic “becausethey are there,” but the real reason I want to see them is because of cod. Someyears ago, I traveled extensively for my book Fish on Friday, but the one place I couldn’t get to was theLofotens. They were just too far off the beaten track and my research budgetwas limited. For centuries, the islands were a mainstay of the medieval codtrade. The Norse ate dried Lofoten cod on their journeys to Iceland andbeyond—the beef jerky of the day. The islanders caught thousands of fish fromopen boats in mid-winter and dried them on wooden racks in the cold spring sunand wind. They still catch cod and sell it abroad, even the fish heads, whichare delicacy in Nigeria. So there’s lots of cod racks to see, even if most ofthe drying is finished for this year. When I learned that Backroads, the Berkeley-basedbike touring company, run two trips a year to the islands, I grabbed at thechance to go.

So here I am inmid-Atlantic, wishing the flight was over, but excited that the adventure hasbegun. Only 1 hour 55 minutes to go until that most ghastly ofexperiences—Heathrow airport at 7.15am!

LesEyzies in southwestern France bills itself as the Capital of Prehistory, whichis hardly surprising, given the extraordinary diversity of late Ice Age sitesin the Vezère river valley. But I would hardly describe the village itself asan attractive one, except for its setting, nestled under precipitous, riversidecliffs. The main street is a strip of restaurants, gift shops, and boasts ofpay parking (on weekdays). Of course, there’s the Les Eyzies Museum, which ismagnificent if you want an intensive education in Stone Age technology. There’salso a small store at the other end of the street where, if you are lucky, you’llfind a modern-day flintknapper in action and can buy a finely crafted Solutreanpoint, which the French describe elegantly as a laurel leaf, a feuille delaurier. Apart from the well-known caves like Font de Gaume and LesCombarelles, there’s also Abri Pataud, conveniently located on the main street.(And, by the way, you can always walk to the Cro-Magnon Hotel, enjoy a nicemeal, and visit the Cro-Magnon rockshelter behind the employees’ houses. Allyou’ll see is a plaque, but you will have paid homage at the shrine . . . .).

AbiPataud is named after the Pataud family, who owned it until the late HallamMovius of Harvard University purchased the site in 1948. From 1958 to 1964, heexcavated the rockshelter in a series of long field seasons that set newstandards for cave excavation, using the Pataud toolshed as a workshop.Fortunately, the excavations are still open for the inquisitive visitor,complete with the network of iron pipes used as a permanent site recordingsystem. A visit to the dig with its closely packed layers and large bouldersfrom the roof is a quick education in the intricacies of excavation onCro-Magnon sites. Hearths appear as compressed, dark layers of charcoal. Flinttools protrude from the walls of the trenches, varying in density from onelayer to the next. Abri Pataud is a magnificent record of Aurignacian andGravettian occupation, spanning a long period between about 32,000 and 20,500years ago. Pataud was one of the first late Ice Age rockshelters to beradiocarbon dated thoroughly. Students are still analyzing the huge quantitiesof animal bones and stone tools found in the excavations. A generation of PhDshave come from the Movius excavations.

AbriPataud is well worth a visit, not only to see the dense sequence of narrowlayers and the museum with its ibex in low relief on the low ceiling, but alsoto ponder the staggering difficulties involved in deciphering life during thelate Ice Age. All credit to the French Government for opening the site tovisitors in 1990. More than any other site near Les Eyzies, it offers a glimpseinto life in one of the most densely occupied areas of Ice Age Europe when Homo sapiens in the form of theCro-Magnons was still a relatively newcomer, and, for some time, handfuls ofNeanderthals still lurked in remote valleys nearby.

Life is full of dramaticcontrasts, none more fascinating than dealing with Indiana Jones one week andvisiting Les Eyzies in the Dordogne during the next. I spent three days there,surviving comfortably with my execrable French and visiting as many sites as Icould, including the excavation at Abri Pataud and Font de Gaume. The paintingsseemed more faded than they were when I was last there nearly years ago, whichgave a visit to Lascaux II a peculiar fascination.

I was lucky enoughto see the original in the late 1950s before it was closed to visitors—andrightly so, too. Now the tourist visits Lascaux II instead, a replica thatencompasses over 90% of the paintings in the cave. Situated only about 200meters (650 feet) from the original, the copy is, quite simply, a masterpiece,which has deservedly become a smash hit with tourists. It was pouring with rainthe day I visited. However, the tours, which you book ahead of time—it’s easyto do—were fully subscribed. The chambers are an exact copy of the originals,rock faces and all, are light softly, but give you a far better impression ofthe paintings than the originals. Why, I don’t know, but you seem to get abetter overall impression of the friezes of horses and huge bulls, the fearsomeBos primigenius, the aurochs. Therewas a sense of movement I had never noticed before, partly because my memoriesof the original visit have faded, but also because I looked at the paintings asa whole as a time. Was it better than the original. For 95% or more of visitors,I could say as good if not better, for they not only get a very accurateimpression of the original, but also feel good when they leave, as they havecontributed to the long-term preservation of what has quite rightly been calleda “Sistine Chapel” of Stone Age art. About the only people who really need tosee the original are rock art specialists, and even they should only go therewhen they have to.

Replicas aredefinitely an idea whose time has come—at Altamira and Niaux, and one wondersif the French will invest the money to create a replica of the Grotte deChauvet, once the study of it is complete. No tourist will ever set foot in thecave, but, judging from Lascaux, a Chauvet replica would be good investment.

By the way, if youwant to see a reconstituted aurochs, visit the Le Thon Cro-Magnon park, orexperience, depending on how you feel about it. There are a couple ofreconstructions of Cro-Magnon life and more Lascaux copies, but the big appealis the park with its animals that are close relatives to late Ice Age forms. Bos primigenius became extinct in Poland in 1627, butfortunately a close approximation of the breed has been bred—nice lookingbeasts with magnificent horns that are said to be fierce and lively. Theylooked like domestic oxen to me, but I wouldn’t like to get up close and personwith the adult male that stared at me! My respect for the Cro-Magnons (oranatomically modern humans if you prefer), rose many notches.

He's back! Nineteen years after the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones has returned in the adventure of the Crystal Skull. Fortunately, I'm no longer teaching: back in 1981, a kind of hysteria for archaeology gripped my students. I knew the Indiana Jones frenzy had assumed serious dimensions when students cameto my Introductory Archaeology course in fedora hats. I think they expected meto wield a bullwhip and wear a leather jacket as I lectured about buried citiesand golden sepulchers. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones would not fare well in thereal world of archaeology, where we talk about radiocarbon dates, potsherds, and settlement patterns. Most of those who wore the hats dropped out: presumably they are now real estate developers--or in jail. (Yes, dear reader, I do have some former students who are guests of the government.) Even today, after all these years, I sometimes sense that lecture audiences are looking at me appraisingly and weighing me against this most popular of Hollywood heroes. After a few minutes, I sense I'm found wanting. And when the Wall Street Journal asked me to write an essay about Indiana Jones as an archaeologist, I really wondered.

When the movies first appeared, there was the inevitable pontificating in archaeological circles about the appalling misconceptions that Indiana Jones gave the world about archaeology. Those who bloviated missed the point. As the Oxford archaeologist John Gowlett once remarked, looking for serious archaeology in these movies is like looking for serious physics in the Star Wars epics. The Indiana Jones movies have little or nothing to do with archaeology of any kind. They are good, old fashioned, and highly commercial, adventure stories revolving around quests for mythic artifacts, which are pure Hollywood entertainment, nothing more. And they're good entertainment at that, except for the Temple of Doom, which is a sophomoric romp. The closest we come to archaeological reality is with the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which revolves around a form of artifact that actually exists. There are about eight crystal skulls in museums and private hands, which are said to be of Aztec or Maya origin. In fact, all of them are modern forgeries. But, and this is probably why George Lucas chose them as an example, they are alleged to have occult powers. One skull in England is said to emit a blue light and to disable computer hard drives. They are the ideal heroes for a movie involving a quest for power and sacred artifacts, with a pleasing mixture of sci-fi and psychic powers, to say nothing of extraterrestrials, all of which appeals to George Lucas. I thoroughly enjoyed The Crystal Skull, especially the sword work and the library scene, where Indiana Jones memorably remarks to a student that archaeology is done outside libraries and quotes Gordon Childe almost as an aside. But serious archaeology, never. This is good solid entertainment, with a nice setup for a future younger Indiana Jones tied in at the end.

Anyone who thinks that the Indiana Jones movies demean archaeology needs to get a sense of proportion and, indeed, a life. The four films have done much to encourage interest in the past, and anyone who looks closer soon realizes that real world archaeology is something very different. Lucas and Spielberg are well aware of the importance of archaeology in today's world, which indeed has potential for entertainment, but a very different kind from that of the swashbuckling adventurer archaeologist of yesteryear. As for Harrison Ford, he is very serious about the need to study the past scientifically. Indeed, he has just been elected to the Board of the Archaeological Institute of America, which is a nice compliment both to Mr Ford and to archaeology itself.

So sit back and enjoy The Crystal Skull and don't worry about the archaeology. That's another world, and one that, on the whole, has benefited from Indiana Jones.