Hello friends, apparently it has been a little while since I did a blog post! It’s been quite a busy summer, so I’ll do my best to fill you in. Last post I talked about the presentation I gave in New Perlican at the end of May, about my fieldwork and that portion of my dissertation research to the community, and we had a lovely time! Since then it has been a whorl wind of activity! My brother and sibling-in-law visited, my husband’s parents came out to visit, my parents were here visiting, and between everyone in our families being in the house, we did a lot of fieldwork for Black Cat, and even managed to squeeze in a little camping trip to Terra Nova National Park with some of our friends, which was a lovely break! Also of course, there was a lot of writing happening in there too, which is mostly what I’d like to chat about today.
Lovely fall pumpkins at Lester’s Farmers Market (for ambience) (photo by author 2023).
We’re nearly through April suddenly, friends, and as I look out my office window at the snow drifts covering the old wooden boats in my neighbour’s backyard, which is slowly melting away, I decided to do a little update on how my dissertation writing is going! Lets start with a summary of what I’ve been up to, and then how I’ve been structuring my work and project going forward!
I think this picture encapsulates how excited I was in Boston during my research trip.
My blog has been all conference travel and research trips recently, and I feel like it’s been a very hectic last few months. In September 2022, we attended the Death & Culture IV conference in York (& went on our belated honeymoon), then in October I visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, to do some research at the provincial archives and so a site visit out in Annapolis Royal where I had a great meeting with Parks Canada and Mapannapolis staff! In November, I was doing research at home, and then we travelled to Arizona to visit my inlaws and their new house, and we got to see a few very interesting 19th-century burial grounds in the desert! We didn’t go anywhere in December, but I was frantically finishing my 2nd book manuscript which is now with my editor, and resting over the holidays. In the first week of January, we were packed back up and off to Lisbon, Portugal, for the Society for Historical Archaeology’s annual conference and a few days of exploring post-conference! Portugal was amazing, Ian and I both want to go back asap.
Finally, I had a second research trip in February to Boston, Massachussets and the Hudson River Valley, New York! I went to the Boston Public Library’s Special Collections which was just an amazing experience (both for research and for seeing cool archives), and the Mass Historical Society’s archives while in the city, then site visits to Sleepy Hollow and Albany, NY, as well as a meeting with the archaeology staff at the New York State Museum in Albany. Travel is done for the next little bit, and I’m pretty excited to not be in the Toronto airport for a few months!
Spade & the Grave 