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Why were Dane and von Ohlmhorst on Mars?

I've always wondered how it was that Martha Dane managed to have had archaeological experience in the Indus Valley. She's not old enough to have done field research there prior to the Thirty Days' War--which took place more than two decades before she ended up on Mars--and yet presumably this region, the front line between Pakistan and Eastern Bloc India, suffered extensive atomic damage during the War.

Recently I've been doing some more gleaning of Beam's Terro-human Future History, trying to better understand the details of the Thirty Days' War. It seems reasonable to assume that Turkey, also on the front lines with the Eastern Bloc, also suffered atomic damage in the War. That got me to thinking. Old Selim von Ohlmhorst is an expert in the Hittite Empire which was located in modern-day Turkey. So perhaps both Dane _and_ von Ohlmhorst have done archaeological work at sites which required attention to a particularly hostile environment, like that characterized by the remnants of atomic devastation caused by the Thirty Days' War.

Aren't those just the sort of archaeologists the organizers of an archaeological expedition to Mars would be looking for? We never hear of any particular interest in spaceflight or extraterrestrial civilizations on Dane's or von Ohlmhorst's parts. They are just committed archaeologists. Perhaps they were recruited because of their respective field experiences in the irradiated Indus Valley and central Anatolia which left them particularly suited to working in the harsh, unusual field conditions expected on Mars.

Or not, of course. ;)

Kukan or Bust!

David
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"The Terro-human Future History . . . has a historian's attention to sociological and political detail that is unsurpassed." - John F. Carr, Introduction to ~Empire~
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