3 Free eBooks - November 2013

It’s time again for the monthly post about eBooks that are freely available on the Internet. The three below are my favorites for November 2013.

Gusman, Pierre.Pompei, the city, its life & art. London: W. Heinemann. 1900. Available from the Internet Archive here. Pompeii still fascinates us today. This book has drawings and color illustrations - for tourists of more than a century ago.

Smith, Watson; Woodbury, Richard Benjamin; Woodbury, Nathalie F. S. The Excavation of Hawikuh by Frederick Webb Hodge: report of the Hendricks-Hodge Expedition, 1917-1923. New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. 1966. Available from the Internet Archive here. Hawikuh is located near the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. Since I had just visited the Southwest in October - the images in this book prolonged the experience once I got back home to Maryland. The book contained many drawings of the designs from pots that reminded me of the pots at Edge of Cedars State Park.

Japanese decorated silk. 1700. Available from the Internet Archive here. This is a digitized version of a swatch book - decorated pieces of silk mounted in an accordion-type folder. The images on silk are elegant glimpses into the skill of the Japanese in 1700; no wonder the silks were in high demand.

Monument Valley - Part II

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park includes a visitor center and then a bumpy loop road that is best down with a higher clearance vehicle. The road meanders through rock formations that have been named: Western Mitten Butte, Eastern Mitten Butte, Elephant Butte, Camel Butte, Three Sisters, Totem Pole. The mind tends to leap to familiar forms when looking at the rocks against the sky….and we want to name what we are seeing. I always wonder if naming a rock formation after a familiar form reduces our perception of the details of the formation just as a stereotype about a group of people reduces our perception of the specifics about an individual. So - I decided to just include an unlabeled slideshow from Monument Valley in this post.

Rock Art and Sculpture at Edge of Cedars State Park

The rock art and sculpture at Edge of Cedars State Park is everywhere one looks. The image with two types of sandal prints (shown at the left) is used on the cover of a book about rock art produced in a book from the 1980s - Spirit Windows: Native America Rock Art of Southeastern Utah. The prints from sandals with patterns on the bottom were the elite or priests; the plain prints were from ordinary people.

The walls and stairwells of the museum have rock art reproductions. Some were similar to the pictographs we had seen at Newspaper Rock (see images 13-15 in the previous post). I always look for spirals. Here are some images from the museum.

Outside the museum there are modern sculptures that take on forms from rock art. My favorite single form was the mountain goat but I spent a lot of time looking at the complex sculpture that made streaks of sunlight through pictograph-like perforations: spirals, tracks, hunters.

And what about a figure coming of a ladder (from a kiva?).

Some look vaguely like people --- but raise questions too. Why does this one only have four fingers on his hands?

And is the one below representing a person at all? If it is not a person - what does it represent? It’s a reminder that culture impacts how we see the world. We take what we recognize from the rock art and make assumptions about the rest.

Clay Pots at Edge of Cedars State Park

This is one of the additional postings I promised in my previous post about Edge of Cedars State Park in Blanding, Utah --- and the focus is the extensive collection clay pots from the Four Corners area that are displayed in this museum. It feels similar to the pot room in the Arizona State Museum in Tucson and I indulged my ‘pots as comfort’ linkage by taking lots of pictures at this state park.

My favorite pot was a bowl - white on the outside and painted inside with black geometric designs. The irregularity of its shape is what made it special. It looked almost unused so maybe the potter from long ago thought the accident of its shape had made it special too.

Many times I am attracted to the colors - the deep oranges or black on white. Others I look more at the geometric designs. This time I also noticed the texture of the pots. The little cup with the waves of texture and burn marks from its firing (image 7 in the slide show below was my next favorite).

Charles Towne Landing

Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site is across the Ashley River from Charleston. I visited in late April and just realized I had not posted about the place. It is the earliest colonial settlement in what is now South Carolina - started in 1670. There are exhibits in the museum and from archeological digs throughout the site that help visualize what it was like. There is a replica of a 17th century sailing ship to tour as well.

There is a statue of a Native American situated in the trees. How strange they must have thought the colonists coming in ships and taking command of the land.

The camellias were near the end of their season but a few bushes still had blooms.

Looking out over the marshy land - the Ravenel Bridge is visible in the distance and pelicans are seen frequently.

The place is wild enough to still have raccoons under the trees.

It had been dry enough the few days before we were there for some of the resurrection fern growing on the oaks to be withered (top image) but other limbs still had green fern - allowing for comparison.

This is a place to walk and absorb the history of the place while savoring the outdoors of South Carolina in the spring before it gets too hot.