I attended a talk last night at my local library given by Dr. Kathy Abbass of the Rhode Island Marine Archaelogy Project. Really interesting stuff and enlightened me as to another avenue of inquiry I can follow while pursuing the history of those who fought during the Revolutionary War in particular. As Dr. Abbass pointed out in her presentation, the average, common person of that time did not leave much in the way of written memoirs. As such, it is in studying the tangible items that they left behind that we learn a bit about the way they lived, examples would be the type of shoes they wore, buttons on coats, etc. Archaelogy is the path to discovering and preserving these items. Marine archaelogy seems to be a valuable contributor to the study of the sailors of old.