As I mentioned last
week, I’ve been working on a story that takes place at the Grand Canyon. At one
point, my protagonist visits the Tusayan ruins at a site that was inhabited by Pueblo
Indians centuries ago. This is a very short scene in the book, but even short
scenes should be factually correct.
As you can see
from the photo I took in 2014, the “rooms” are identified with signs indicating
how they were used (e.g., storage, living quarters). Since the signs don’t
explain how the archeologists determined those uses, it is only natural for my
protagonist to ask how they knew. And if she hadn’t asked, my readers might
have wondered why she didn’t.
That’s where my initial
research fell short. I have visited archeological sites before and have a
general idea of how those determinations are made, and anything too complicated
would confuse my middle-grade audience. So a simple description is good enough,
and one paragraph was all I needed. Even so, I wasn’t totally confident in my
answer, and I believe that even the smallest details should be as accurate as
possible.
To check my limited
knowledge, I purchased a book that used the excavation of a different Pueblo
village to illustrate how archaeologist interpret the past. The book is called Life
in the Pueblo: Understanding the Past Through Archaeology, and it gave me
the information I needed. In fact, it was interesting enough that I read the
entire book even though what I wanted to know came about a third of the way
through. (I didn’t notice until I had already purchased it, but the archaeologist
who wrote it is named Kathryn Kamp.)
It may seem that I
went to a lot of work to ensure the accuracy of a very minor point in my book, and
I suppose I did. It was worth it, however, because readers deserve to be able
to trust even the smallest details.
So I’ll always
research the little things.
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