Keith Goetzman writes:
While many archaeologists dig for clues to antiquity, a California state archaeologist has collected and catalogued the remains of a much more recent but equally curious civilization: a 1960s hippie commune. E. Breck Parkman is in charge of a collection from the wreckage of the Olompali commune in northern California that includes “melted sneakers, scorched fabric, broken plates, a tube of 40-year-old face cream [and] red Monopoly hotels,” Archaeology magazine reports in its July-August issue. Which doesn’t sound as exciting as, say, purple velvet bell bottoms, lava lamps, and skull bongs, but hey, they’re still sorting through it all. . . .
Despite the hedonistic nature of their subject, Parkman and his helpers have done their archaeologists’ work diligently and soberly, packing up the remnants of the whole long, strange trip into office boxes. Among the keepers: about 30 pieces of butchered cow and pig bones that might be from the mansion’s final communal feast.
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