"The Wind's Twelve Quarters" by Ursula K. Le Guin: an archaeologist's recollection of thoughts

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"The Wind's Twelve Quarters" is a collection of stories by Ursula K. Le Guin.
As the author herself explains in the Foreword, this book is by no means a complete anthology and rather a "retrospective" of her works, which I would highly suggest to explore extensively to anyone interested in any kind of narrative.

I say so despite having read only the most famous saga of Earthsea and some minor stories myself, so far, but her way of writing always struck me as something somehow different. Not being a literary critic and having read most of it translated, I cannot say much about the style, so I guess my primary interest lies on the topics and how she presents them.
One of the omnipresent themes is that of "history", be it personal or collective, a constant reflection on the passing of time and the relation of humans (and non-humans) with it.

At this point you might have guessed what an author mainly writing about Fantasy and Science-Fiction has to do with archaeology. However I swear I didn't expect so many direct references to it myself, when I first started reading the first story, and as there were more even in the second I've decided it was time to share some of my thoughts here.
Of course one will find something they look for in everything, it's one of the basic biases in any research (be it scientific/academic or else), but in this case I'd argue Le Guin put some effort to feature archaeological stuff along with her interests in Cultural Anthropology.

Below you can find a list of the short stories which I've decided to share thoughts about, linking to sub-sections within this blogpost, and/or eventually to more extended reflections on dedicated webpages.

Again as a disclaimer, with this list and the related sections I do not necessarily intend to cover every occasion archaeology is mentioned in this book, while I could actually comment on stuff apparently unrelated but which still made me think about the topic in general

Semley's Necklace

Some time passed since I've read this first story, so I guess I'm skimming through it again in order to write anything meaningful.
That said, I do remember the core events, and have thoughts about Museum Studies and the matter of restitution (and related terms associated with relevant cases/contexts) still circulating in my mind...

In fact...
[To be continued...]

April in Paris

The loneliness of staying hours documenting materials.

This is what an archaeologist from a distant star in the 7th millennium CE was doing before being drawn into the narration.
In a brief but efficient paragraph, along with the whole framing of the short story, the author conveys this feeling I've personally felt many times and I'd go so far to say that every archaeologist experienced at least once in their career.

The story does more tho. It doesn't limit the feeling to archaeology, but rather creates a commonwealth of scholars falling to this sense of existential crisis. As this is arguably the engine of the narrative piece, of course this feeling is not limited to characters in any academic frakework, encompassing all including a dog (hence my comment before about "non-humans" in Le Guin narratives).
Quoting the thoughts of the first -by appearance- protagonist who is a professor of ...:

Another topic I've thought about while reading this story, though it probably also fits for the previous one and the others in the collection, is the persistance of archaeology in the future.
It is almost given for granted that in millenia from now archaeologist will still exist and doing pretty much the same things. This, however, is yet another point in the critical discussion about the actual sustanability of the discipline which is arguably not granted at all and anyway not at the cost of great changes in aims and methods. [on this i might have dedicated a chapter of my master thesis, not so relevant here, but ypu might be interested in these references/quotes by Hutchings and LaSalle reading "..."]

One last and perhaps less conflictual content I feel like pointing out is the spatial context of this short story.
As the title suggests, the protagonists are in Paris, precisely in a place where the cathedral of Notre Dame is easily spotted and part of the landscape of reference. Now, at one point of the events, it is the archaeologist who says...

[To be continued...]