May-Faire 2007 Program

The May-Faire will highlight the medieval and colonial roots of American agricultural practices and technology. The May-Faire will celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the Jamestown Landing which launched the beginnings of the American Nation.

The first settlers in Jamestown were only the beginning of waves of settlers from the British Isles and western Europe who were to create the United States of America. They and those who followed brought not only their desires for freedom and a better life, but they also brought their mental tool kits and skills, skills developed through the centuries in medieval and late medieval Europe. These skills, in agriculture, milling, iron manufacture and timber construction, built the economic underpinnings that gave political developments a stable base in trade and industry. The technological and cultural continuity between the late Middle Ages and colonial America is a story that needs to be understood, because it helps us to understand how what we were influenced what we became and how much political possibilities are related to economic realities.