Can you dig it? 'Excavations' drive home Americans' car fervor

His black-and-white images feature cunning combinations of scale models of digs and true or semi-true locations.

A Grand Canyon wall imprisons the jutting front of a Mercedes, a kind of fossilized whale. An Egyptian tomb hosts a Porsche shrouded like a monstrous mummy. A miniature Model A Woody, a vintage beach mobile, is cratered on the sandy grounds of an actual radio astronomy observatory.

This is a full-fledged social documentary, created by a conceptualist who has addressed Japanese-American internment camps and New Mexico's nuclear-power ghetto.

Nagatini provides Ryoichi's journal pages and precise photos of pairs of ancient and modern accessories (i.e., hieroglyphic tablet and Etch A Sketch).

A clever project ends up being valuable. On one hand, Nagatini intelligently illustrates our religious devotion to our cars. On the other hand, he reminds scientists they need to be humanists.

In a surprisingly touching conclusion, Ryoichi and his colleagues decide to leave a revered Aboriginal rock alone because ''the puzzle Â… is enough.''

They also leave us with a definitive definition of archaeology: ''to dig deeply in the earth is to make a hole in the fabric of time and history and future possibility.''

Speaking of future possibility, I can't wait for Nagatini to excavate aHummer from an Australian barrier reef. Nourishing sea creatures is the only smart use for a stupid, useless vehicle that gives the Edsel a good name.

''The Ryoichi/Nagatani Excavations,'' photographic tableaux by Patrick Nagatani, through Sept. 25, gallery, Rauch Business Center, Lehigh University, Taylor Street and E. Packer Avenue, Bethlehem. Hours: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. 610-758-3615, http://www.luag.org .