In Search of the Black Jewel

In Search of the Black Jewel is a sweet little book about the experience of participating in an archeological field school in central Alaska where we were looking for stone tools and other evidence of ancient camps from approximately 10,000 years ago. The rare discovery of small pieces of black obsidian would send jolts of great excitement throughout the crew as these finds were not only quite uncommon, they represented something so extraordinarily precious to those who came before us, for they had carried these shards of volcanic glass, vital instruments of their survival, hundreds of miles to ultimately lay for thousands of years where we would later discover them.