Poor Boys, Pilgrims & Families Are Going to Graceland

This just in from Heritage News (April 2006): Interior Secretary Gale Norton designated Graceland, home of the king of rock ‘n’ roll Elvis Presley, as a National Historic Landmark on March 27, 2006. Click here for the full press release.

Norton made the announcement during a special ceremony with Priscilla Presley on the mansion grounds in Memphis, Tennessee. Graceland was Presley’s primary residence for 20 years of his 23-year career and is the one site most associated with him. It is one of the five most visited home museums in the United States and the most recognizable residence in the nation after the White House (which is quite scary).

Graceland is now in the company of Mount Vernon, Monticello, Hoover Dam, (and for us archaeologists) the William Paca House and Cahokia Mounds.

Graceland Cam:

Tags: Graceland, Elvis, landmark

Fear & Loathing on the Alberta Plains…

My friend and fellow Project Past member Christopher Goodmaster has provided us with a photogallery of the 3 day roadtrip that followed the 2005 Plains Anthropological Conference held in Edmonton, Alberta. The trip organizers dubbed it “Fear & Loathing on the Alberta Plains” in honor of the late Hunter S. Thompson…

http://www.pbase.com/speleo42/fear_and_loathing

“We were somewhere around Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, on the edge of the plains, when the archaeology began to take hold….

We had two GPS units, seventy-five projectile points, five sheets of graph paper, fortification ditches, circular depressions, cairns, and a whole galaxy of glyph panels: shield bearing warriors, human figures, elk, geometric shapes of all kinds and chronologies… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, and more than a case of beer. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious archaeology addiction, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. “