From the Archives of Peter Merlin, Aviation Archaeologist is an artist book of new photographs and text by Trevor Paglen centered on the archive of Peter Merlin, a historian, technical writer and leading expert on classified aircraft. Guided by the idea that something always remains, Merlin, a former NASA archivist, has gathered flight wreckage, dossiers and memorabilia, sometimes the only remnants of covert government operations, centered on military bases such as Area 51 and Edwards Air Force Base and the crash sites of experimental aircraft around them. Paglen selected fifty-nine objects from the collection, from the sinister to the mundane to the humorous, and photographed challenge coins, patches, models and other symbol-laden items in stark pictures that extend his work on the culture of secrecy, experimental geography and military symbology. The cover is beige with a yellow patch showing black aircraft silhouettes, and the pages shown online include an essay titled An Archaeology and a photograph of a fossil dinosaur egg.