tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post3772332092498471221..comments2024-03-26T14:19:33.332-07:00Comments on Bench Grass: Gather the Bones, 11: 1450: Turtle Island Before Columbus: Or, The Conquest of Paradise By Something I'm Not Really Responsible ForErik Lundhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-88632907880484627052014-08-05T12:09:46.711-07:002014-08-05T12:09:46.711-07:00It's a pretty odd story. You can make up a rom...It's a pretty odd story. You can make up a romantic story about why, say, the owner of the farm adjacent to the Tower Site near Barnesville, Ohio is restricting access to it --if he is, as I was unable to confirm this on Google a moment ago--. That is, a story that would look like the one which Fenimore Cooper tells in <i>Wept of Wish-ton-Wish</i>, in which the gentry of the early nineteenth century Yankee country town are descended from the Indian "race" that used to claim the land. The Tower Site was abandoned around 1500AD-- just close enough for a wildly romantic imagination to propose a secret historical continuity. Some of the sites that Southern Culture archaeologists like Tim Pauketat have such difficulty reaching probably actually are cases of exactly this. Who knows? It's pretty easy to speculate wildly on the Internet when everyone is so busy protecting everyone else's privacy.<br /><br />But 3500BC? Here's where we get all cold and distinctly unromantic and borrow a page from British landscape studies and talk about new elites appropriating older sites. The Gentry are doing that in as modern a way. That is, to be locally powerful in many parts of the United States, it might serve to be seen as opposing the Feds. <br /><br />Not that I'm <i>saying</i> that Cliven Bundy is a sekrit Coloured Person Mopa Paiute, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate.Erik Lundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05728486209757153685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6568915967186844196.post-34229358547027478852014-08-05T05:25:38.035-07:002014-08-05T05:25:38.035-07:00Rereading, I've only just noticed the surname ...Rereading, I've only just noticed the surname of the weirdly reticent owners of Watson Brake: Gentry. <br /><br />Not even faking.Alexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17153530634675543954noreply@blogger.com