Jamestown Conference

Yesterday Jim and I were down in Williamsburg for the 2008 Jamestown Conference. We tried to post from the conference but technology fooled us and we couldn't get a wireless signal. After a long day, neither one of us remembered to post a blog when we got home. So here's an update on the conference.

It was a packed conference with most of the presenters from either the Williamsburg or Jamestown projects. We were the only representatives from Maryland. All of the presentations were very well done. I'm not going to go through all of them but you can get a look at the schedule here. Here's a brief overview of two talks that I thought were very interesting.

Juliana Harding of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary gave a very interesting talk on oyster shells as data recorders of the environment. I wonder what the oyster shells from PT could tell us?

Jillian Galle from Monticello talked about DAACS: The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery. This site is very extensive in its collection and after a brief look at it this morning, it seems fairly simple to navigate. It could prove a useful tool to anyone looking at artifact collections.

And of course, Jim gave his presentation on our work at PT and was well received.

We would like to thank Jamie May and all the folks who put the conference together for the invitation to come and talk about Port Tobacco.

- Peter