6/3/2002 - 10:45 p.m.
As I sat in a 4-Runner with U2 on the stereo, having proceeded across the Bay Bridge over the Chesapeake Bay to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the road turned to dirt and gravel and the landscape to fields of corn and wheat. I said, "The web site said this was a field school for urban historical archaeology. This is not fucking urban!"
The other two members of field school with me were laughing, but we were cut short when suddenly an enormous 18th-century mansion, made of red brick with white columns and windows, emerged from behind some trees in front and to the left of us. We were stunned into silence. When we made our way us to the house, we saw that all around it were green terraces, leading to a smooth horizon of land or water.
As it turned out, the horizon was fake. I didn't know it was possible to fake a horizon, but it turns out that earthworks were constructed along the rim of the property to create the effect that the plantation was a perfect round world.
That wasn't the only illusion we have come across in the three days I've been in Maryland. (Another illusion, or rather lie, was the urban nature of the plantation archaeology, despite a lame attempt by the associate director to tie the plantation to the city.)
Annapolis, the city in which the field school is based, is a city of illusions and false fronts and artificial reality and scams for the visitors. The entire city of Annapolis is fake. The concept of "Historic Annapolis," which is the only reason anyone cares about the city now, was invented in the second half of the twentieth century by newcomers to the city, and has been sold to tourists ever since. And in the middle of it, the old state house, which according to an article written by the director of the field school, is an 18th-century panopticon.
I've come to this particular field school because that argument is central to my own thesis--"The Ca d'Zan as Panopticon: John Ringling's Role in the Creation of Sarasota's Urban Identity." My argument isn't that the Ca d'Zan is a panopticon, but rather that it posses panopticon's characteristics that were meant to imbue a certain ideology of Sarasota's meaning to those who saw it--and it continues to do so today. There's a lot more to it then that.
I am not living in the artificial city of Annapolis, though, but in College Park, the city of the University of Maryland, just outside of D.C. Like good archaeologists, we have gone out for drinks after every day, although it's leaving me exhausted, as class is eight hours a day, five days a week. And Uzi Baram, who is generously sponsoring this project and my thesis even though I haven't finished my ISP or the class I took with him last semester, has e-mailed me and I must answer him.
But to make a long story short, I'm back.
