Sometimes blog postings spin out of control. Last year I wrote three posts about the Donner Party and the way that their history had been captured in Wikipedia. My ruminations about the Donners, who might or might not have gotten eaten in their camp, and the nature of historical knowledge online have, been some of…
Tag: Archaeology
What’s for dinner (cont’d)
In two previous posts (1) (2), I explored what happened when the historical archaeologists Julie Schlabitsky and Kelly Dixon used modern forensic archaeology techniques to investigate what happened at the Donner family encampment. I also described what happened to my edits of the Wikipedia entry on the Donner Party (which has now been edited 34…
What’s for dinner (cont’d)
My edit of the Donner Party entry in the Wikipedia lasted not quite five days. As I wrote in an earlier post, I changed one sentence in the entry to reflect the work of Kelly Dixon and Julie Schlabitsky on what happened in the Donner family camp. The first paragraph of the entry I read…
What’s for dinner?
One of the enduring (and horrific) tales of the expansion of the American Republic westward is the story of the ill-fated Donner Party. A group of more than 80 emigrants to California, the Donner Party set out for the West Coast in 1846, but made the mistake of following what was known as the “Hastings…