But before being replaced it was tossed from hand to hand by the diggers, as they tried their hats on it to see which fitted.A century after his death, John Milton’s body was dug up by his admirers to establish its precise location, so the monument they planned to erect would be in the right place. But what do we do with them once we have dug them up? What do they mean once we have brought them “owte of deadely darknes to lyvely lighte” (as the 16th-century proto-archaeologist John Leland put it)?As Wallace, a Cambridge English don when she is not up to her neck in rubble, brings out, there are many different ways both to use and abuse the fruits of excavation; and even the most pious or scholarly endeavours have a way of lurching into something less respectable. There is a pleasing solidity and objectivity about the subject, in contrast to other more slippery ways of investigating the past Bit by bit the relics emerge. If, on the other hand, we are astute and lucky like Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae in Greece, we may come across the mask of “Agamemnon”, with the face underneath it preserved for a few magical seconds before crumbling into dust.Man has always left his rubbish behind him, and in time the earth has always blown over it and interred it. If, like the luckless and idiotic 18th-century barrow-diggers we spend pointless years ransacking one empty barrow after another, the answer is nothing much. Some observations are genuinely witty, such as the film director with so many servants that one is appointed “spokesmaid”.One wonders, though, whether Ms Anderson’s fans are really the kind of people who can be bothered to read a book Time, and the bestseller lists, will surely tell.. Archaeology is self-scrutiny.

Proust this is not.Star tells the well-worn tale of a small-town girl who hits the big time by wearing skimpy T-shirts, posing nude and cornering mindless bimbo roles on television. The tale is so well worn, in fact, that Ms Anderson says it’s a pretty close approximation to her own life. “My main character’s name is Star Wood Leigh, which is actually what my porn name would be if I decided to change careers,” she explains. “Somebody told me once that you figure out your porn name by taking the name of the first pet you ever owned and combining it with the name of the first street you ever lived on.”Porn is not an idle reference, since the overwhelming theme of the book is sex, sex and more sex. The T-shirt Star is obliged to wear for her oyster-bar waitressing job in Chapter 1 reads: “Shuck me, suck me, eat me raw.” As for the first movie star she seduces in Hollywood, she writes: “When she took her turn on him with the chocolate sauce, he could hardly control himself, tearing off the blindfold and dragging her to the bedroom.” You get the picture.Star is not badly written, as trash goes (thanks to the acknowledged efforts of ghost writer Eric Shaw Quinn).

“Find out what happens when the A-list meets the D-cup,” the blurb promises. Then again, there is nothing remotely high-minded about Star, the debut work of fiction from the former Playboy model and Baywatch star which hits the supermarket shelves this week.
The cover features a naked spread of the author, with judiciously placed white stars to avoid obscenity suits. And there is another “bonus” spread on the inside of the cover (minus all that pesky writing covering up the air-brushed flesh). Prokofiev’s R&J has become big business, lodged in virtually every ballet repertory. The story of Romeo and Juliet is so familiar, so ubiquitous, it’s become hackneyed and tired It’s lost its power to startle. This is a fresh way in, to wake up your attention and get you thinking.Bolshoi season: Royal Opera House, London WC2 (020 7304 4000), to Sat. Pamela Anderson writing a novel sounds about as likely as Pat Barker or Fay Weldon taking their clothes off for a living.