Dust to Dust

asked.
    “Sure,” he said.
    “First, let me take some photographs,” said Diane.
    She studied the face again. Even up close and even speckled with the bone inclusions, it was a beautiful face. She traced her finger along the curve of the lips and chin. The clay represented the elastic skin of youth, nothing sagging, nothing lined.
    “I asked Jin to try to extract DNA from the bone in the pottery fragments. Hector and Scott suggested some strands might have survived in a very thick piece of the pottery. Could you select a piece that can be destroyed and is thick?” asked Diane.
    “I can, but a bonfire kiln heats up to about thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Can DNA withstand that kind of heat?” asked Jonas.
    “No, it can’t. I’d probably just be wasting their time,” she said.
    “What exactly did they have in mind, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Jonas.
    “They were hoping we might luck up and get a piece that was in a cooler place in the fire, and look to see if any DNA strands in the middle of the fragment were protected. They were going to use a protocol some friends of Jin worked out for analyzing the DNA of shed hair.”
    “I didn’t think shed hair had DNA,” said Jonas.
    “It has such a small amount that it gets destroyed using traditional methods of extracting DNA. There’s a method in which processing takes place on the slide that can save what little DNA exists. It would be a long shot anyway, but if bonfires get that hot, there would be no place cool enough for DNA to survive,” said Diane.
    “Might be worth a try anyway,” said Jonas. “You know, in case it does work.”
    “I’ll put it to them and let Jin and his crew make the decision,” said Diane.
    “How are the Elvi working out?” asked Jonas, grinning broadly.
    “Their work is very good.” Diane smiled back.
    “I think they are a hoot. I’ve talked with them. They aren’t nearly as far-out as they put on.”
    “I sort of suspected that,” said Diane. “You know the thing about the shirts, don’t you?”
    “Color wavelength,” said Jonas. “They’re just showing off—making everything a puzzle. They’re kids really. Of course, most of the people around here are kids to me. You’re a kid to me.”
    Diane laughed.
    “Tell me, can we find out how old these pottery sherds are? How did Marcella know they are modern?”
    “Context, for one. She found them in a pit mixed with bottles and cans. The cans were pretty well rusted out. The bottles were dated to the fifties,” said Jonas.
    “Context? Is that it?” asked Diane. “Couldn’t this be much older and have gotten mixed in somehow?”
    “No evidence of any mechanism for strata getting mixed. Remember, the pottery sherds she found were of pots she could put back together. All the pieces were there. They were probably broken in situ. Also, we pretty well know all the prehistoric ceramics. Even something this unusual in Georgia would have been known long before now.”
    “Really, nothing left to discover?” said Diane.
    “I didn’t say there is nothing left to discover, but we’re not going to find any lost civilization of bone-tempered face-pot people. It’s like mounds,” said Jonas. “People are always telling me they have an Indian mound in their field, and I tell them no, they don’t. We know where all of them are. What I’m trying to say is that we know an awful lot about the prehistory of Georgia. Yes, we still have questions, but none so profound as lost civilizations of mad potters.”
    Diane smiled. “That’s what Hanks called this unknown artist—a mad potter.”
    “He did, did he? Then I guess he isn’t completely off his rocker,” said Jonas.
    “So you think these pieces date from the fifties?” said Diane.
    “I think so. I didn’t help excavate, and she hasn’t said a lot about them. I didn’t know they were bone tempered, for instance. She just mentioned to me the context she found them in.”
    Diane used the phone on the desk to call David and asked him to come down and photograph the sherds and the face when he had free time. She briefly explained to him what she had discovered.
    “I need some high-contrast pictures,” said Diane. “I need to see the topography of the sherds.”
    “Sure thing,” he said. “Spooky case.”
    “No kidding,” said Diane. “If you could hook up Marcella’s computer, that would be helpful too. The one we found in the house.”
    She hung up the phone and turned to Jonas.