Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 24, 1990 TAG: 9006240236
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-6 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The University of Virginia scientists are looking for significance in such things as why interpreters at the re-created 18th century village emphasize the number of trees on the grounds. Or, why interpreters dwell on dining habits of the colonists, and why the kitchens were separate from the houses.
Eric Gable is fascinated by the interpreters' attention to the fact that the original village had fewer trees than the re-creation.
"Why is this little nugget of history considered so important?" Gable said. "Why is there this obsession with trees in all the tours?"
The anthropologists are taping tours, listening in on training sessions, interviewing visitors and employees, sitting in on management meetings and scouring the corporation's archives.
They are looking for historical peculiarities and trying to trace how and why they are included in the culture of Colonial Williamsburg.
"When you hear as many of the tours as we do, you see people constantly talking about the little things. We have to ask why. We don't know. But these quirky little artifacts of history keep popping up," said Richard Handler, an assistant professor of anthropology.
On one tour, the interpreters always point out that the well-aged meat on the plates in a formal dining room still has the animal's head attached. Gable said the interpreters always draw a response when they explain that people of that time wanted proof of the type of meat they were eating.
"What is interesting is that these little peculiar facts become more significant to the visitor, rather than what a historian believes is important," he said.
Many tours of the restored 18th century houses include the fact the kitchens were in separate buildings. The most popular reason given is to cut down on fire hazards. But Handler wonders why that reason is given when the typical 18th-century home was rife with fire hazards from fireplaces and candles.
"Some historians believe the separate kitchen was another way that slaves were excluded from the home, a form of social segregation," Handler said.
Handler and Gable said their research is less concerned with how accurately history is portrayed by Colonial Williamsburg than it is with why events or customs of the time are portrayed the way they are.
Close attention to detail is a hallmark of Colonial Williamsburg, said one historian.
"Colonial Williamsburg is dedicated to accurate restoration of the time as it was," said Richard Rotina, a historian at Old Dominion University.
Colonial Williamsburg has been known to change the color of shutters on buildings when its ongoing research shows the shutters were a different shade than first thought, he said.
Handler said a history book offers an interpretation of history from one or two authors, but Colonial Williamsburg interprets history through a sophisticated corporate structure. The process includes corporate administrators, historians, educators, front-line `storytellers' and the audience itself, Handler said.
Cary Carson, vice president for research at Colonial Williamsburg, described how the process works.
"It's a bit like the old parlor game when one person whispers into the ear of another, who in turn whispers the same message to another, and so on until it gets back to the original person who is surprised at the subtle changes in the message as it passed through the people," Carson said.
"When one of our historians happens by a tour, they are often surprised by the subtle changes in emphasis - not any inaccuracies or something we would take issue with, but an alteration of emphasis," he said.
Handler said the researchers are looking at the history presented by Colonial Williamsburg and the corporation that runs it.
Colonial Williamsburg, the brainchild of John D. Rockefeller Jr., re-creates 18th-century colonial Virginia. About 1.2 million tourists visit it annually.
Rotina, who specializes in Colonial Williamsburg history, said the Williamsburg that has been re-created differs from the original.
"It's all very nice, but it's not an 18th-century village. I don't think too many visitors want to walk down Duke of Gloucester Street kicking the pigs out of the way, walking through mud and horse droppings," he said. "They see a Duke of Gloucester Street better than it ever was."
by CNB