Buttons, Bones, and the Organ Grinder's Monkey: Tales of Historical Archaeology - Hardcover

Greene, Meg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0208024980 ISBN 13: 9780208024985

Publisher: Linnet Books, 2001

Synopsis

Offers an in-depth look at five excavations, as archaeologtists attempt to piece together clues found at the sites including a Jamestown fort, slave quarters at Jefferson's Monticello, and the Battle of Little Bighorn.

About this title

About the Author

Meg Greene holds two master's degrees, in history and in historic preservation. She writes regularly for Cobblestone Magazine, has authored several books, and works as an architectural surveyor and historian as well.

Reviews

Gr 6-10-Historical archaeologists, those who use written records to help find and interpret the material evidence remaining from past lives and cultures, have become increasingly focused on overlooked peoples and their daily lives. Five such investigations are described in this book. They include the discovery and reconstruction of the actual Jamestown fort and first settlement; investigations that support Sioux versions of Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; and excavations of New York's infamous Five Points Neighborhood, once thought an unsavory slum. Each episode is presented as a mystery, narrated in roughly chronological order in two time frames-then and now-which may make the stories a bit hard to follow for some readers. Occasional black-and-white photographs illustrate the topics and a map clarifies the movement of troops at Little Bighorn. Footnotes and an extensive bibliography document Greene's research but the necessary interpretation and explication of it are not always presented. For example, the author has 38 surviving Jamestown settlers building "between forty and fifty thatch-roofed houses" after a fire in the fort. However, the concept of this book is intriguing and the collection could spark interest in the field.

Kathleen Isaacs, Edmund Burke School, Washington, DC

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 5-8. In this intriguing introduction to historical archaeology, Greene spotlights five sites of recent investigation: the Jamestown Fort, the sunken seventeenth-century ship La Belle, the slave quarters at Jefferson's Monticello, the Montana battlefield of Little Bighorn, and the Five Points neighborhood in New York City, a notorious slum in the mid-1800s. The diversity of sites and their particular challenges and stories provide interesting reading and, collectively, a good picture of the uses and processes of the archaeological approach to history. Illustrated primarily with photos, this lively and informative book offers readers new perspectives on old stories. It also shows how original research can bolster a previously rejected view of history, as in the case of Little Bighorn, where the archaeologists' findings support the Indians' reports of the battle. Detailed source notes and a lengthy bibliography of source materials are appended, along with lists of recommended books and Web sites. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Linnet Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0208024980
• ISBN 13: 9780208024985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 122