I wrote a piece about traveling with my son to Sudan. I was hoping it would be like the trip I took with his sister when she was younger, but it turned out quite differently. The essay was published by Your Teen Magazine, a publication for parents of teenagers. Bonding With My Son In Africa?…
My friend David is a great archaeologist and I remember his clothes always being filthy. I think those things are related. Remember that old Monty Python skit where old men argue about who had a tougher life growing up? Conversations like that happen on digs all the time, and apparently even after digs. Reading about…
This winter, I was back in Sudan and had a videocamera with me. We’re finishing up the El Kurru International Archaeological Project and the dig director, Geoff, asked me to make a short film about cultural heritage in El Kurru village. To do that, I took camera and editing classes from my local cable access…
The contents of this post first appeared in my monthly email newsletter. If you subscribe, you can get more writings like this delivered straight to your inbox and not miss a thing. Sign up here. On Take Your Child To Work Day, Cognoscenti published my essay I Took My 11-Year-Old Daughter to Work… In Sudan. Great headline! I…
Like a few million other people, I went to see the new movie Wonder Woman soon after it came out. Like a few hundred other people, I’ve taken a course in the Sumerian language and was surprised when, as a minor plot point, our heroine reads a few lines of that ancient tongue. So I wrote…
Turns out, if you Google “Pee in the Sahara” you may find the story of Mauro Prosperi, an ultramarathoner who went off course in Morocco and ended up in Algiera (183 miles off course). Or, you could find my short article on a bus stop in Sudan and the “facilities” provided there. You can read…
Last fall, El Kurru, the archaeological site where I work in Sudan was featured in a National Geographic/PBS film called “Rise of the Black Pharaohs.” National Geographic recently posted some video of the drone footage with narration by the camera operator in their online National Geographic Raw series. It’s fun to see and you can…
There’s been a record amount of snowfall in Boston this February and we might break the seasonal snowfall record by this weekend. That means a lot of time shoveling snow, and that means a lot of time getting lost in thought. My latest essay was published in the Good Men Project. An archeologist shovels through the Boston snow…
As I prepare for another dig later this month (i.e. ignore clothes and such but trying to find the perfect book for the airplane), I was reminded of an essay I wrote for Booksense.com. That website is no longer available so I guess the rights reverted back to me. Dig libraries can be described in…
The Boston Globe Connections column yesterday printed my essay on my experience away from the Internet, forced to actually connect with the other people in my presence to learn anything — and enjoying it. I coined a phrase to describe the collected brainpower in a room: the Roomnet. Earlier this year, an archaeological dig took…
Jack Cheng, PhD 