Artifact Hunter Gifts

Junk shop with the 'largest collection of NASA space shuttle debris in Texas!'

'Someplace where we could take lots of selfies with national monuments...'

'They look more up to date than the ones in your tool-box.'

An ancient Egyptian exhibit at a museum.

A child at a museum starts to pull the wrappings off a mummy.

"There's more inside."

Piles of trash discarded by ancient people are a rich source of artifacts for archaeologists. I unearthed garbage dumps that advanced our understanding of prehistoric societies. On the island of Crete I found ancient trash that increased our knowledge about the Minoan people. And I recently uncovered informative Celtic rubbish. Please stop saying studying ancient cultures by what they threw away is "junk science"!

Museum. Hours. You're donating your collection of pre-Columbian art? Yes! What's Mayan is yours!

"Good heavens, Caruthers. It's the wife!"

Reluctantly, Indiana Jones reaches for the true cup of Christ.

"Now we're leaving the hall of stuff we stole from other cultures and entering the hall of stuff we paid too much for."

Dog finds a nice bone at the museum.

"You're right! It is a mezuzah!"

"Don't you sometimes worry that if they do give us our stuff back we'll lose some of the sense of grievance that's so crucial to our cultural identity?"

Haunted museum

A family reunion that warms them to their very core.

'Great to see the Mayan pottery collection is still drawing a crowd.'

"Of course, it might help if we actually found something every once in a while!"

'Will you guys be quiet? These walls are trying to tell me something!'

Archeological find in the Myanmar jungle.

My own museum.

"Norman, let's lend out the Olmec head."

'Now, a real collectable to bid on: a signed first edition of The First History of the World.'

Wow, a thousand-year-old artifact! What a discovery! 2019. Wow, a patch of land not buried in thousand-year-old useless artifacts! What a discovery! 3019.

The Wonder Of It All

"You must stop digging up the past."

Antique oriental carpets.

Mummy is alive at an Egyptian exhibit at a museum.

"Today in school we studied the great works of antiquity - the pyramids, the coliseum, the abandoned shopping mall on Route 6."

"This coin must be 2,000 years old. Try not to put this one in a pop machine."

"Hoping to find a Picasso at a garage sale isn't a solid retirement plan."

'Yeah, I tried 'Open Sesame' ... then I just went at it with a backhoe.'

'I just think we should start dating other artifacts.'

"It's not even artisanal."

'Not THE Rosetta Stone?'