Experimental archaeology (we will just call it EA) is a somewhat controversial field, prone to public stunts. At its core someone tries to duplicate lost technology as accurately as possible to gain insight into the technology.
There is a good (many wiki pages aren’t very good, this one is, and is footnoted… I probably will write about my love of footnotes some day…) (I bet you can’t wait) wiki page on the EA at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_archaeology .
I realized my wood splitting is in fact an EA experiment… I am learning how much time and effort it took to heat a 19th century home… Yesterday I spent close to 20% of my time tending the gathering wood, splitting it, and tending fires. And the damn house was still cold… Similarly, a few times a year we light the house with oil lamps and candles… again, it takes significant time to fill the lamps, trim the wicks, clean shades and light everything. It takes lots of lamp oil (more than a gallon a day). It rapidly becomes obvious that they didn’t light the house much… a couple of lamps maybe, only in the rooms they were using.
10 years ago I lead a crew that built a wooden railroad flatcar during Railfair 99 in Sacramento. Usually we rebuild 19th century narrow gauge cars… this one was a 20th century standard gauge car. All the parts were heavier and larger. Heavy enough that they likely would have needed mechanical help to lift beams into place… This wasn’t true of the narrow gauge cars… there was no part which couldn’t be lifted by 6 men…
The draft gear took as long as building the rest of the car on our last narrow gauge project… The Sacramento car had iron bolsters… like the draft gear it was much slower work…
This says a great deal about the infrastructure needed to support the technology, something I wouldn’t have understood if I hadn’t built a couple of railroad cars with 19th century technology.
On other subjects, three people have asked what Dave’s last song was… (You can listen to his last show at www.kfog.com) He came on for a moment after 10 at 10 only said it wasn’t a Beatles song… then played Friends by Elton John…
Friends was followed by without commercial or other interruptions….
I left My heart in San Francisco - Tony Bennet
Hello Good bye - the Beatles
You didn’t have to love me but you did – Sam & Dave?
I always turn the car around – OAR
Love is the seventh wave – Police
Only then did Annalisa come on… In typical KFOG fashion no one has said anything about the set…
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