Happy

My thirteen-year-old son just said to me, "I remember most of your stories. You tell good stories."

:-)

Me at the Hampstead Hill Festival

Big doings in Patterson Park in Baltimore on Sunday: the governor's band, the 1814 rock opera, the Blue Angels . . . and I'm speaking, at 1:00 PM, at the Pagoda, about the archaeology we did in the park this spring. This is called the Hampstead Hill Festival, part of the Star Spangled Spectacular the city is putting on for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore.

For more on the archaeology, see these posts:

Archaeology in Patterson Park and the Battle of Baltimore, 1814
Geophysical Sensing in Patterson Park
Ground-Penetrating Radar in Patterson Park
Archaeology in Patterson Park: First Saturday
Archaeology in Patterson Park: Halfway Done
Archaeology in Patterson Park: Third Saturday, and the Kinetic Sculpture Race
The 1814 Fortification Ditch in Patterson Park
Archaeology in Patterson Park: Final Saturday

In Which I Become a Video Star: Catoctin Mountain Park Archaeology

The videos I recorded for the Catoctin Mountin Park in Maryland about their archaeology are finally up on YouTube. I led a four-year archaeological study of the park that we finished in 2010, so these final products have been a long time coming.



This one is on the farmers who used to live on the mountain, farming places that look way too rocky an steep to ever have been worth taking a plow to.



The charcoal industry was the economic mainstay of the ruggeder parts of the mountain from the Revolution until after the Civil War.



The Indians who came to the mountain were there either to hunt or to quarry a stone called rhyolite that they liked to use for tools.

Law!

To quote our eloquent Vice President, "This is a big fucking deal."