In this innovative work, Julia King moves nimbly among a variety of
sources and disciplinary approaches-archaeological, historical,
architectural, literary, and art-historical-to show how places take
on, convey, and maintain meanings. Focusing on the beautiful
Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland, King looks at the ways in which
various groups, from patriots and politicians of the antebellum era
to present-day archaeologists and preservationists, have
transformed key landscapes into historical, indeed sacred, spaces.
The sites King examines include the region's vanishing tobacco
farms; St. Mary's City, established as Maryland's first capital by
English settlers in the seventeenth century; and Point Lookout, the
location of a prison for captured Confederate soldiers during the
Civil War. As the author explores the historical narratives
associated with such places, she uncovers some surprisingly durable
myths as well as competing ones. St. Mary's City, for example,
early on became the centre of Maryland's "founding narrative" of
religious tolerance, a view commemorated in nineteenth-century
celebrations and reflected even today in local museum exhibits and
preserved buildings. And at Point Lookout, one private group has
established a Confederate Memorial Park dedicated to those who died
at the prison, thus nurturing the Lost Cause ideology that arose in
the South in the late 1800s, while nearby the custodians of a
1,000-acre state park avoid controversy by largely ignoring the
area's Civil War history, preferring instead to concentrate on
recreation and tourism, an unusually popular element of which has
become the recounting of ghost stories. As King shows, the
narratives that now constitute the public memory in southern
Maryland tend to overlook the region's more vexing legacies,
particularly those involving slavery and race. Noting how even her
own discipline of historical archaeology has been complicit in
perpetuating old narratives, King calls for research-particularly
archaeological research-that produces new stories and
"counter-narratives" that challenge old perceptions and
interpretations and thus convey a more nuanced grasp of a
complicated past. |In this innovative work, Julia King moves nimbly
among a variety of sources and disciplinary
approaches-archaeological, historical, architectural, literary, and
art-historical-to show how places take on, convey, and maintain
meanings. Focusing on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay region of
Maryland, King looks at the ways in which various groups, from
patriots and politicians of the antebellum era to present-day
archaeologists and preservationists, have transformed key
landscapes into historical, indeed sacred, spaces. The sites King
examines include the region's vanishing tobacco farms; St. Mary's
City, established as Maryland's first capital by English settlers
in the seventeenth century; and Point Lookout, the location of a
prison for captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. As
the author explores the historical narratives associated with such
places, she uncovers some surprisingly durable myths as well as
competing ones. St. Mary's City, for example, early on became the
center of Maryland's "founding narrative" of religious tolerance, a
view commemorated in nineteenth-century celebrations and reflected
even today in local museum exhibits and preserved buildings. And at
Point Lookout, one private group has established a Confederate
Memorial Park dedicated to those who died at the prison, thus
nurturing the Lost Cause ideology that arose in the South in the
late 1800s, while nearby the custodians of a 1,000-acre state park
avoid controversy by largely ignoring the area's Civil War history,
preferring instead to concentrate on recreation and tourism, an
unusually popular element of which has become the recounting of
ghost stories. As King shows, the narratives that now constitute
the public memory in southern Maryland tend to overlook the
region's more vexing legacies, particularly those involving slavery
and race. Noting how even her own discipline of historical
archaeology has been complicit in perpetuating old narratives, King
calls for research-particularly archaeological research-that
produces new stories and "counter-narratives" that challenge old
perceptions and interpretations and thus convey a more nuanced
grasp of a complicated past. Julia A. King is an associate
professor of anthropology at St. Mary's College of Maryland, where
she coordinates the Museum Studies Program and directs the
SlackWater Center, a consortium devoted to exploring, documenting,
and interpreting the changing landscapes of Chesapeake communities.
She is also coeditor, with Dennis B. Blanton, of Indian and
European Contact in Context: The Mid-Atlantic Region.
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