Herald & Lantern 12 October '83^~^

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Survey Exploring Pinelands Folklife

WASHINGTON, D C. - The American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress began a survey of traditional culture in New Jersey’s Pinelands National Reserve in September. The National Reserve, which was created in 1978 by an Act of Congress, encompasses the region in south-central New Jersey known as the Pine Barrens — a million acres of sand beneath a stubble of short pine trees and scrubby oaks, broken occasionally by the dark, wet green of cedar swamps.

The area is inhabited by cranberry growers, farmers, some who commute to jobs around the region, and some woodsmen who “work the cycle,” hunting for deer and raibbits, trapping for furs, longing for clams and oysters, making charcoal, or gathering moss or other plants. The Pinelands Folklife Project will, /evaluate a broad rangit of folk technology, craft, and expression found within the National Reserve. For two months, a team of researchers trained in folklore,

DorU Ward FLASHBACK — Victorian maid Mary Kale Dunwoody chats with Union officer Erik Newpher while the two Cape May residents await the Victorian Weekend fashion show Saturday at the Emlen Physick Estate, Cape May. Mary Kate is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Dunwoody.

anthropology, ethnobiology, environmental psychology, American studies, and photography will identify and document aspects of the region's fplklife. A series in-depth studies based on the survey’s finding will get under way next spring. THE PROJECT is distinguished from cultural surveys that have already been conducted in the Pinelands in its emphasis onliving cultural resources. Traditional activities to be documented include storytelling, folk music (religious and secular), .folk architecture and landscaping, foodways, crafts, seasonal events and festivals, and family and community social life. The project will also examine the region's distinctive natural environment, including the interrelations of, folk-life with natural resources and landscapes. Traditional ways of classifying and harvesting the region's flora and fauna, of naming and navigating the woodlands and wetlands, and of forecasting the weather and decorating the landscape will be investigated, as will the rich vein of folklore about the region's people and places The survey is being performed under the combined auspices of the Pinelands Commission, the U.S. National Park Service, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the New Jersey Historical Commission, the New Jersey Department of Environmental- Protection, and the New Jersey Department of Human Services.

The project will serve as a pilor study in several ways. The Pinelands National Reserve is a test case for a unique category of public land. The National Reserve concept pro vides for continued development of the land in accordance with guidelines established by a commission composed of Federal, state, and local representatives THE PINELAND Commission hopes to apply some of the study’s findings in carrying out its niandate to manage and interpret the region's resources, cultural as well as natural. The project will ■ also serve to exemplify and test some of the preniises underlying the study, . Cultural Conservation, a , policy document soon to be published by the American Folklife' Center and the U.S. Department o the Interior. The report recommends that government agencies join forces to con serve the living cultural resources that are often less tangible, though, no less real, than the historic artifacts and archeological sites that a region inherits' from its past. The project will employ documentary still photography and sound recordings as well as field notes and drawings The American Folklife Center engages in the conservation, presentation, and dissemination of American folk cultural traditions. Based at the Library of Congress, the center contributes to the cultural planning and programming of the Library, the Federal Government, and the nation.

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