It's almost like a legend: the city that appears in the desert once a year, thrives for a week, then disappears... only to repeat the process a year later.
Burning Man IS legendary, but not like Brigadoon. It's a real place, a festival site in Nevada's Black Rock Desert that comes alive in late August and early September.
It's a bonanza for an anthropologist to study, and so Carolyn White does just that from her perch at the University of Nevada-Reno. White has not only visited, but has dug into the site, a story she tells in the book The Archaeology of Burning Man: The Rise and Fall of Black Rock City.
The author joined us in 2020 for this conversation.