Hi, Joe -
Long time, no see. You still working at Annapolis? I was one of Mark's
fieldschool students at the printship back in '87 or so. Enjoyed the ride
on the ship Elysia!
Hard to summarize the contributions of Vauban in ten words or less. But,
pictures are worth a thousand words, so you would be best served to check
out the WEB site for the Vauban Association. Lots of info there that
should get ya started quickly.
17th century French military engineering pioneer/genuis. His work was all
the rage back in the good o'l days.
One of his biggested contributions was to lower the height of defensive
works as much into the ground as possible so as to protect them from direct
or low trajectory artillery fire from these newfangled cannons that were
complicating life for old defensive works on the Continent, and to provide
as many overlapping fields of fire as possible so as to defend these works
from being stormed. Favored multi-sided structures for this purpose. Most
European works were like this. In US, most were four sided. Again, Ft. Ti.
is an excellent and probably the best example.
He also developed offensive techniques to take the places he designed
defenses for.
Military engineering through the ages - or as anthro types love to say
"change over time" - is a fascinating field to study. Always hope to see
more on the topic at SHA meetings, but seldom do. Not that clay pipes are
bad, but.... ;o)
Carl Barna
Lakewood, CO
Richard Dent
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Fort People -- Since I live near Ft. Frederick, could one of you perhaps
offer a short abstract on what it means to be a Vauban fort? Being a
nonmilitary inclined archaeologist I would be interested in the short
version of what this entails. We're very proud of Ft. Frederick, but
beyond the obvious I apparently don't know why.....
joe dent
American University
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Re: Vauban Forts
ditto St. Augustine, FL; Ft. Ti in NY; and you might also consider Ft.
Frederick in MD. And this is just the masonry forts.
A lot of the British wooden forts like Wm. Henry and Edward in NY utilized
Vauban principles.
I think we need an all-day prime-time plenary session on Vauban forts at
the next SHA meetin' (are ya listenin' Larry or David?) in lieu of femmist
theory stuff.
Actually, it would be really neat to have such a session that would
examine
frontier/imperial defense systems from the time of the Romans thru the
18th
century. The fact that the SHA is meetin' in Albuquerque next year would
be the perfect opportunity to roll in the Spanish frontier defense
policies/practices as an adjunctt to a broader world view/approach to the
subject over time. But, you run the risk that it might be dumped into the
Sunday morning at 6AM time slot.
Hurray, this is some REAL historical archaeology for a change!!! ;o)
Carl Barna
Lakewood, CO
I wonder if they might be interested in Vauban-inspired forts in the US?
We
have one here in Nashville, Tn.
dan allen
Cumberland Research Group, Inc.
>
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> paul courtney
> leicester
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