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Academic geekery, and other things
I am on the mailing list for the Society for Historical Archaeology (of which I am a member and have been since about 2004). Lots of times there is randoms stuff of vague interest and little bits of debate, people looking for artifact identifications, etc. Today there was a link to a website documenting the maritime cultural landscape survey of Shirley Plantation. The plantation is Virginia's oldest plantation, as the site will tell you. It is still fairly intact, and it has had a fair amount of terrestrial archaeology conducted there previously and a very deep historical record. The survey is looking for and documenting maritime landscape features like wharves and jetty's associated with the maritime operations of the plantation. They've done some core sampling as well, to get an idea of how the river has behaved and how deep the submerged archaeological record might be around some of these features.
I'm excited to see this kind of work being done on plantations, which had, and needed, strong maritime connections. In Virginia especially, the waterways were what connected the planters to each other. Its a true cliché to say that the rivers were the main method of transportation, but it goes a little beyond that. They provided a place, as well as a means, of social interaction. I'm excited to see what comes out of this so that I can use it to think through some of my own work a little more. I want to think about how much these connections made, or didn't make, these plantations into maritime communities, and whether you can really draw a clear line. Maybe there were maritime subsets - people on the plantation whose lives were more closely ties to the river - how connected were they to the broader maritime world? Maybe that connectedness (in the sense of being tied in some way to the broader maritime world) is something I need to focus more in my own work. Anyway - if the data is available, I'd love to see if I could use the plantation as a comparative site :D
In completely unrelated news: things that the new household is never going to run out of, ever:
Spices
Dishes (esp plates, utensils, and glasses)
Pans
Books
Towels
Vacuum cleaners
....yeah @_@
I also made the mistake of leaving my aloe plants outside for a few days. They bleached to a translucent off-white and drooped, and now look like some horrible alien tentacle plants. One of them is reviving with water and the relatively cooler temperatures outside (and lack of direct scorching sun). The other may be a wirte of. if I had my camera here, I'd take pictures @_@
I'm also thinking about bringing Jola home, 'cause I miss her :(
I'm excited to see this kind of work being done on plantations, which had, and needed, strong maritime connections. In Virginia especially, the waterways were what connected the planters to each other. Its a true cliché to say that the rivers were the main method of transportation, but it goes a little beyond that. They provided a place, as well as a means, of social interaction. I'm excited to see what comes out of this so that I can use it to think through some of my own work a little more. I want to think about how much these connections made, or didn't make, these plantations into maritime communities, and whether you can really draw a clear line. Maybe there were maritime subsets - people on the plantation whose lives were more closely ties to the river - how connected were they to the broader maritime world? Maybe that connectedness (in the sense of being tied in some way to the broader maritime world) is something I need to focus more in my own work. Anyway - if the data is available, I'd love to see if I could use the plantation as a comparative site :D
In completely unrelated news: things that the new household is never going to run out of, ever:
Spices
Dishes (esp plates, utensils, and glasses)
Pans
Books
Towels
Vacuum cleaners
....yeah @_@
I also made the mistake of leaving my aloe plants outside for a few days. They bleached to a translucent off-white and drooped, and now look like some horrible alien tentacle plants. One of them is reviving with water and the relatively cooler temperatures outside (and lack of direct scorching sun). The other may be a wirte of. if I had my camera here, I'd take pictures @_@
I'm also thinking about bringing Jola home, 'cause I miss her :(