When last I left you, Gentle Reader, I was poised to describe the Freedman’s Memorial in Dallas, which is located at the former site of the old Freedman’s Cemetery. That cemetery was a local institution from 1869 until the 1930s, when it was largely wiped out by road construction. Its location (what’s left of it) is now a Dallas Landmark site.
Tags: Memorials · Archeology · Attractions
In the 1930s, the good city fathers of Dallas, all of whom were white as the driven snow, decided that those newfangled horseless carriages that were getting so popular needed a better way to get from south to north and vice versa than the surface roads they already had. This was right around the time when the marketing geniuses of Madison Avenue (not to mention their clients in Detroit and out on the oilfields) had started pointedly suggesting that us independent-spirited Americans needed individual conveyances, so we wouldn’t have to use public transit with all the other riffraff. The fact that said public transit was cheap, in place, and quite effective was of no consequence; over the next few years the rails were grubbed up or paved over, the overhead copper wire recycled into alternator motor windings and the like, and the Car became King. It was only in the late 1980s, as both car and fuel prices skyrocketed into the stratosphere, that we realized the error of our ways and started putting all those things back, at hideous expense.
Tags: Memorials · Archeology · Architecture
If you’re ever in the DFW metroplex and find yourself with a hankering for learning about — or even doing — some archeology, you’re in luck. Not only do we have some excellent museums you can visit to learn about the culture history of the region, we also have the venerable Dallas Archeological Society (DAS) to help you out. Most of the members of the DAS are talented amateurs, but there are professional archeologists among their ranks, too, including a few academics and at least one fellow who owns his own archeological consulting company. If you ever visit with them, you’ll find yourself in good, enjoyable company. I speak from experience, I do.
Tags: Archeology
Today, my adoring public, I’m going to talk about something near and dear to my heart: North Texas archeology. I’m not quite an expert, but I worked in the area for nigh on ten years back when I dug holes and played in the dirt for a living. The Dallas/Fort Worth area has yielded some significant finds dating back to at least 13,000 years ago, and there are some excellent collections of those remains in local public repositories, particularly the Dallas Museum of Natural History and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (both of which are overdue for a blog entry). I expect you’ll enjoy browsing both when you come to visit. To help you better understand what you’ll see, I’ve prepared this little introduction to the basics of D/FW prehistory. It’s not nearly as detailed as what you might find in, say, a thesis or a textbook, but I think it gets the basic points across.
Tags: Archeology
As you may recall, until a few years ago I worked as a professional archeologist. No, really. I even have the hard-earned papers to prove it. I worked in the field for more than a decade, and I still consider myself to be an archeologist; but given the fiscal and physical realities of the past few years, I haven’t been able to practice my chosen trade lately. The fiscal difficulty comes from the fact that, until recently, I just couldn’t afford to be an archeologist; the pay isn’t the best ever. Things have recently changed in my fiscal world, but now I’m blissfully happy with what I currently do for a living, and besides — physically, I’m about as capable of the work these days I am of running in the Boston Marathon. Suffice it to say that diabetes is a pain in the ass.
Tags: Archeology