The rotting newspaper scenario brings to point a few questions of
preservation vs learning. Although I haven't had any success preserving
waterlogged papers (freezing and slow drying works best) I have found
burned newspapers which were successfully dated. Newspapers, unlike
handwritten documents, bottle lables, or other low volume ephemera were
printed by the thousand sin each issue and are more likely to survive in
libraries and archives today thus making it likely that you would find a
copy of the same issue still in existance today.
While excavating a layer of fire debris dumped at the edge of the terraced
garden at Charles Calvert's Riversdale Mansion in College Park, MD, I found
a wad of burned newspaper on which, although burned to a crisp, the ink was
still visible. It is amazing how well something can be preserved once it
reaches stasis with its environment - but take it out of that environment
and that is where the troubles begin and time is of the essence.
Since the papers had been bundled at the time thery were burned and were
obviously thrown away en masse it was easy to read portions of the text,
but it was most important that we identified the newspaper, and the date,
rather than try to preserve it for the information that these little scraps
contained. Lacking a date the content of the printed word might give some
clues. I chose to examine and record what was visible in the field rather
than take the chance of not learning anything at all when it turned to dust
before we could get it into a container. It barely made it out of the
ground, but as was excavated we carefully peeled apart the numerous layers
and noted the text and illustrations that could be seen. From various
scraps, none complete in itself, it was clear that, among the bundle, we
had a copy of the Tuesday June 16, 193_ Washington Times. Other internal
info and a check of a perpetual calendar showed that this paper was of
1931. There was also a Tuesday June 16 in 1936, but other information we
found in the visible text, including the fact that the house had suffered
an attic fire in 1933, corroborated the June 16, 1931 date.
Rather than preserving the piece and not risking destruction, the date and
identification of the newspaper allowed us full identification of not just
that fragment, but we then could go to a collection of the Washington
Times on microfilm or whatever, and look at the whole paper and not just
the scrap. There are incredible resources in the form of old newspapers
that are often difficult to use to their fullest potential, but if you can
identify even a specific or particular part of a newspaper by design or
date, it can sometimes be a fun and interesting task to track down the
piece of the puzzle. Since papers usually stayed local (I presume, but
there are plenty of exceptions) the local print is the best source.
Dan W.
________________________________________________
Don't forget to check out
DAN WEISKOTTEN'S HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY HOME PAGE at:
http://www.erols.com/weiskotten/weiskotten.html
Since I'm STILL desperate for work in the Richmond/Penninsula area,
take a look at my resume at http://www.erols.com/weiskotten/resume.html
or my more detailed CV at http://www.erols.com/weiskotten/dansvita.html
also note that I have a new e-mail address:
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