Hypertext links have been the most effective way to reinforce the contextual nature of the web site, and of the actual data. Internal links from individual participant pages are linked to other sections of the site which individuals have written or provided. In addition, each primary entry point into the material contains numerous internal links to other sections.
On the main 'archaeology' page, for example, there are links to history pages, ethnography pages, and links back to oral histories written by family members. These link in turn to family genealogies, church histories, and other documents. There are excerpts from a diary written (during and after the Civil War) by the plantation owner's granddaughter, linked to an analysis of the diary by a linguistic anthropologist. There are links from this diary to information about people who lived and worked on the plantation, along with links to archaeological interpretations that have been informed by material in the diary. There is oral history information from the African American descendant community, linked to church histories, linked in turn to genealogical information about individual families. This is linked to and from archaeological data concerning religious and healing practices that African-American residents used to cope with the difficulties of their lives - linked to information about burial traditions within the community, linked back to the oral history data which discusses those traditions. There is also information about the social and political contexts in which the people on this plantation lived (and in which their descendants continue to live), linked to archaeological data which resulted from those contexts.
Hypertext links can also operate as powerful rhetorical devices.
Go to the Levi Jordan Web Site
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URL: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue6/mcdavid/contextuality.html
Last updated: Wed Apr 28 1999