As the world becomes more technologically advanced and modern, architecture and the material culture shows this. I believe that it is important to preserve the past for our generation and future generations, as the architecture and material culture are drifting further and further away from that of the past. Thinking about artifacts gives us a much more real and relatable understanding of the way people of the past lived than merely reading about facts. In addition to this, it is easier for us to learn lessons based on tangible things. That is why the earthquake described in the article, Historical treasures lost, damaged in Italian quake, was so devastating. Italy has very rich physical history that it well preserved. It is a shame for future generations that so many things were damaged or lost as a result.

Terminus post quem is defined as, "the earliest possible date for something." So in this context Deetz is explaining that the earliest possible date for the concentrations in question recovered from Parting Ways was after the deaths of Cato, Prince, Quamany, and Plato.

After doing some research, I found that it is a controversial topic whether or not shotgun houses originated in Africa or Haiti. Deetz does not make this clear and seems to be making the assumption that building such a style home is evidence of their display of traditional African culture. Deetz even goes on to claim that it is possible that they built homes this way as a sort of protest. This reduces Deetz's credibility in my eyes because I feel as if he is too eager to believe something that supports his ideas. Deetz would appear more credible if he provided more frequent counter arguments, specifically when he makes a strong claim not easily supported by evidence.

I think that it is incredible that a ninety-one year old man who was familiar with the area as a child just so happened to visit the site the same time that digging was in progress. A strange coincidence offered us more factual information about the community that otherwise would have been very difficult to prove.

I think that it is incredible that so many fragments were recovered from the Parting Ways community so many years later. As we learned from the article "Historical treasures lost, damaged in Italian quake," nature can destroy and damage historical artifacts in a very short period of time. We are lucky to find the remnants of the past, giving us the opportunity to piece them together to uncover the mysteries of the past.

The article, Historical treasures lost, damaged in Italian quake, describes a devastating earthquake destroying "at least 293 cultural heritage assets were damaged in the earthquake zone" and destroying 50 more. Walls dating back to the medieval era crumbled. The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.2, which elevates it above the level of "disruption" and to the level of "disaster." Many old cathedrals were cracked and in some cases more severely damaged as a result.

Summary: James F. Deetz describes the conclusions made about the Parting Ways community, through assessing records of the people that lived there and archaeological evidence from the site by making connections to known aspects of African American culture. The pieces to the puzzle of the story of the Parting Ways community and the people who inhabited it do not carry much weight by themselves, however when all the pieces come together many things can be inferred. Of the four men that originally inhabited the community, records tell us the most about Cato Howe. It is known that Quamany, Cato, Prince, and Plato were all slaves until they enlisted to fight in the revolutionary war and received their freedom afterwards. The town of Plymouth Massachusetts granted Cato the ninety-four acres of land, known as Parting Ways, where he lived with the other men and their families. Through the excavation and study of the land, evidence was found to support traditional African cultural practices along with the common American cultural practices of the time. For example, the architectural style of the home resembles the shotgun houses that are believed to have originated in Africa with a New England style front door. Although there is not strong enough evidence to consider much of what we have learned from the Parting Ways community as fact, it still offers us an interesting evaluation on early freed slaves. There are very few factual records of these people and the way in which they lived, therefore I believe that the evidence pieced together by Deetz is useful to us today.

A shotgun house is described as "a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than about 12 feet wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house." The origins of the name "shotgun house" and the building style itself are debatable. A popular opinion comes from John Vlach himself. According to Vlach, "origin of the building style and the name itself may trace back to Haiti and Africa during the 18th century and earlier." However, others argue that the shotgun houses originated in creole sections of New Orleans later on. The shotgun house was the most popular style in the American South "from the end of the American Civil War (1861–65) through the 1920s." This is interesting, as they gained popularity many years after the people of Parting Ways perished. I believe this supports the idea that shotgun homes originated in Africa at an early date. The simplicity leading to ease of building a shotgun house coupled with high temperatures and a lack of home cooling technologies in the southern states likely led to the popularity of this style of home.

Negative evidence is defined as "evidence for a theory provided by the nonoccurrence or absence of something." In this context, there was a failure to find architectural materials or any other remains suggesting the possibility of the paving being the remains of a building or some sort of trash disposal. Therefore it is possible for us to make the assumption that the paved area was intentionally created to serve a different purpose. As a result of the concentrated broken ceramic and glass objects, the author comes to the conclusion that their findings were related to understood grave decoration practices originating in the American South. It is very fascinating how archaeologists put together the small, individually worthless, pieces to create a plausible story as they have in this situation.