The Book of Unconformities

June 1, 2020
Raffles uses stones as jumping-off points to create poetic portraits of various times and places. In geology, an unconformity is "a discontinuity in the deposition of sediment." In his latest book, the author examines rock associated with specific places--e.g., the friable marble at the northern tip of Manhattan or the glittery gneiss of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland--as part of a quest to acknowledge that "even the most solid, ancient, and elemental materials are as lively, capricious, willful, and indifferent as time itself; and that life is filled with uncomformities--revealing holes in time that are also fissures in feeling, knowledge, and understanding." That marble in New York City changed the lives of the peoples--from Lenape to Manhattanite--who have lived there as well as the topography of the island. Raffles delves into the history of the neighborhood to fashion a multihued story, but he always returns to the rocks. The author also explores the sandstone prevalent in the U.K.; magnetite in Iceland; the iron of a meteorite in Greenland; muscovite from many sources; and, in the Svalbard archipelago, "concreted blubber, a product of human geology, the residue of thousands of whales boiled in three-meter-wide copper cauldrons, the spilled oil congealing with sand, gravel, and coal in a rocky mass." Each section is packed with vivid, entertaining tales, whether Raffles is discussing the enigmatic objects, obscure rites, the Scandinavian occupation of the Orkney Islands, or the geopoetics of megaliths. Throughout, the author is "alive to the deeply archaic currents moving through and around me." The text shimmers with rangy curiosity, precise pictorial descriptions, well-narrated history, a sympathetic eye for the natural world, and a deft, light scholarly touch. The mood is as unpredictable as next week's weather, as Raffles remains keenly attuned to the politics and personalities that move the action along. As panoptic and sparkling as the crystals contained in many of the author's objects of study.

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July 1, 2020

Siccar Point, near Edinburgh, Scotland, demonstrates the geologic feature known as an "unconformity," points out Raffles (anthropology, New School; Insectopedia) in this new book. Unconformities, he goes on to describe, are discontinuities in the layers of sediment, visible boundaries between different eras and landscapes. Meanwhile, geologic unconformities are the perfect metaphor for this book, a work that brings very different themes together. Raffles discusses how stones, fashioned hundreds of millions of years ago by natural process, are employed by humans for the purpose of civilization. He goes on to describe how industrial humans built New York's infrastructure out of age-old marble, Neolithic masons raised sandstone megaliths on the British Isles, Vikings inhabited the volcanic and wild landscape of Scandinavia, and stone revealed the impact crater Hiawatha in Greenland to modern science. The narrative often takes sudden turns, but, like the geologic unconformity, it all seems to fit into the same landscape after all. Ancient and modern periods, both human and natural, are discussed, as are the histories and cultures of Europeans and native North Americans. VERDICT A work of poetic science, a smashing together of the human and the natural world, of cultures separated by time. Just as a geologic unconformity, this is erudite and artistic.--Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

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