Archaeological investigations into the whereabouts of the Alder Creek Donner family campsite yielded a number of artifacts. One type of artifact collected was writing slate fragments, the topic of this thesis. Why were writing slate fragments found at the Alder Creek camp? An investigation into writing slate in the historical record had to be conducted to address this question. The lack of pertinent research associated with writing slate posed a major obstacle, as it has been disregarded as a diagnostic artifact in historical archaeological literature. This paper addresses this problem by a history of writing slate and its uses, as well as including a discussion of precursors to writing slate, to provide a context for materials recovered from the Alder Creek site. It was first thought that writing slate was only used in the context of education, as might have provided a means of keeping the children busy during the Donner Partys snowbound experience. However, this research indicates that a number of other activities can be associated with writing slate; including messages and notes, record keeping and accounting, gaming and gambling. The writing slate recovered from the Donner family camp is analyzed here using the results of the historical overview of this material and a cognitive archaeological approach.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-06062008-182026 |
| Date | 07 August 2008 |
| Creators | Swords, Molly Elizabeth |
| Contributors | Dr. Kelly J. Dixon, Dr. Randall R. Skelton, Dr. Hipólito Rafael Chacón |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-06062008-182026/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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