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The Digital Heritage Project is a part of The Mountain Heritage Center at Western Carolina University
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Culture Archive
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Penland School of Crafts
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsThe widespread poverty that the Great Depression brought to Appalachia led to the founding of one of the area’s most valuable treasures: the Penland School of Crafts. Nestled deep in the hills of western North Carolina’s Mitchell County is the small community of Penland. . . -
Notable Movies
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsMost moviegoers are familiar with popular films that have made Appalachia their subject--like Thunder Road and Deliverance--or those have used a central character from Appalachia to create powerful drama, as in the case of Jodie Foster’s Agent Starling in Silence of the Lambs. . . -
Asheville Tourists
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsWhat do the GreenJackets, the RiverDogs, the Grasshoppers, the Catfish, the SandGnats, the BlueClaws, and the Crawdads have in common? They do not refer to square dance teams or high school debate clubs. Rather these intimidating monikers belong to professional, minor-league baseball teams. . . -
Circuit Riders
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsCircuit riding clergymen, mostly Methodist and Baptist, brought religion to the scattered and hard-to-reach settlements of Appalachia before the Civil War. Obtaining resident pastors for sparsely-settled mountain communities was an ongoing problem. . . -
Decoration Day
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsDecoration Days are an important part of Appalachian ritual life. Usually held in the summer, these days are set aside by families and church congregations to clean and decorate their cemeteries. . . -
Camp Meetings
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsAppalachian religious belief and expression were deeply influenced by the camp-meeting movement that swept the South in the early 19th century. . . -
Folkmoot
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsAppalachia has long been appreciated as a reservoir of traditional culture. But every July, Folkmoot USA brings the world’s traditional cultures to Appalachia. Folkmoot USA, one of the world’s largest international folk dance festivals, is held in and around Waynesville, NC. . . -
Stepping
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsStepping is a form of dance involving synchronized stomping, clapping, singing, and chanting. It was developed in the early 20th century by African-American fraternities and sororities. It was based on earlier African-American dance traditions known as ring shouts and patting juba. . . -
Shape Notes
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsShape notes were invented in the late 18th century to simplify teaching people to sight-read unaccompanied sacred musical scores. They were called shape notes because, instead of drawing all of the music scale’s seven notes with round shapes, each note was represented by either a triangle, square, oval, or diamond shape, called fa, sol, la, or mi, depending on its position in the scale. . . -
Old Time Music
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsIn Appalachia, Old-Time Music refers to a variety of traditional music styles -- ballads, folk songs, fiddle and banjo tunes, sacred songs, and even some popular songs recorded in the early 20th century. . . -
Folk Festivals
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsFolk festivals occur regularly in western North Carolina. Their origins go back to the 1920s. Asheville’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival was one of the first. Their popularity has grown as our constantly-changing modern society fears losing touch with its cultural roots. . . -
Dulcimers
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsDulcimers come in two versions. The so-called “mountain dulcimer” looks like a skinny fiddle with 3 to 6 strings, sits across the player’s lap, and is plucked with the fingers. The other consists of a box frame with 40-120 strings; because its sound is produced by hitting the strings with small mallets, it is often called the “hammered dulcimer”. . . -
Appalachian English
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsLanguages are spoken in a variety of dialects. Appalachian English is the name given to the dialect spoken in the Southern Mountains. It differs from Standard English, the version taught in schools and spoken by network television announcers, in several ways. . . -
Farmers’ Market
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsThe recent growth of farmers’ markets across Appalachia is part of the effort of mountain farmers to survive in a national market dominated by large-scale agribusiness. The Department of Agriculture identifies more than 800 farmers’ markets throughout the region. . . -
Bee Keeping
Posted on August 30, 2010 | No CommentsThe practice of bee keeping entered Appalachia with the earliest European settlers, and honey was a prized sweetener long before granulated sugar was available. As late as the mid-20th century, most mountain farmers kept hives and practiced the skills of bee keeping. . .