In his Forward, archaeologist Ian Brown introduces this autobiography thus, “What you are about to read is another version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with Evan Peacock serving as…Huck.” Peacock grew up in poverty in the backwoods of Mississippi, joined the army, worked in several menial jobs, went to college eventually getting a Ph.D. from Sheffield University in England, and became a leading American archaeologist based at Mississippi State University.
This memoir is an immensely entertaining journey from life on the farm to the rarefied airs of academic England to an extremely successful calling in archaeology. It is story of adventures and of maturing. He became a leading scholar of the Mississippian culture that dominated the southern United States from about A.D.1000 to 1600, and field work was always his passion.
Peacock is the author of about 100 scholarly articles, and his Mississippi Archaeology Q&A is a classic, but this is different. Kudzu on the Ivory Tower is a delightful saga of one man’s progression to a life in archaeology. Peacock tells a story like only good ol’ Mississippi boys can, and the reader is sure in appreciate and enjoy.