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Archaeology of College Hill 2008 - Home
John Brown House Archaeology Report - 2008
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
This project invites you to delve into the personal lives of the inhabitants of the John Brown House. Beginning with the Brown family, you will research and locate unofficial correspondences between members of the Brown family and anyone else. Unofficial correspondences include letters, diaries, invitations, bets, drawings, etc. They do not include probate inventories, estates, land deeds, account books.
Your work will take you first to the John Brown House. You will need to arrange with Dan Santos (401.273.7507 x60) a time when you can meet and view the binders of historical documents. These binders include all sorts of documents, so you will have to locate those that are most interesting and pertinent to your research. Then, you will go to the John Carter Brown library and consult with a librarian there to view personal correspondences between John Brown (or any of his immediate family members).
After your first skim of some of the binders at the John Brown House, you will need to organize an approach to organizing the documents. Focusing on a particular time period, an individual, or a theme (i.e. parties, a diary, etc) would be the best way to go about this. Once you have settled on a framework for your research, gather copies of these documents. If copies cannot be made, transcribe them in writing or on a laptop, including all references to the date, and collection in which you found them. These will be important contributions to our site report, to building a historical context for and interpreting the material culture that we find.
Please address the following questions in your write-up:
• Discuss the documents located and how you designed your research scope.
• What activities do the documents detail? How do they provide insights into the personal lives, interactions, and concerns of the people involved in them?
• Do the documents make references to any types of material culture? If so, what?
• What kind of people do the documents detail? (think: gender, race, social position, age, occupation)
• How do the documents convey information about the broader social climate and issues surrounding those who they involve?
• What information do the documents contain about the Brown family’s social networks, status, connections?
• Do the documents convey any negative feelings, political leanings, disputes, or enemies of the family?