This all reminds me of a survey we did about ten years ago here in East
Tennessee. While shovel testing a gently sloping hillside just over the
fence from a farmstead, the only artifacts we found were mid-1980s
arcade gaming tokens; as I recall, we found around 5 or 6. We were
discussing this with the farmer who lived there when his son happened to
overhear. Turns out that he (the son) had taken a handful of the tokens
and thrown them in the field when he was a kid in the hopes that
archaeologists would find them someday.

Dan Marcel
Staff Archaeologist
MACTEC Engineering & Consulting, Inc. 
1725 Louisville Drive 
Knoxville, TN  37921-5904 
Contact #: (865) 588-8544, ext. 1143 
Fax #: (865) 588-8026 

-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ron
May
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 1:20 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: the Kid Factor influence on artifacts (etc)

The Kid Factor is always a problem. During a survey of property
overlooking  
Interstate 5 and the San Elijo Lagoon, my crew found and diligently
mapped-in 
an  alignment of small cobbles (overgrown with bushes) that we could
never be  
certain of the source. Since it was near a 7,000 year old prehistoric
site, 
but  also on a cattle ranch that dated back to the 1820s, we realized
just 
about  anyone could have created it. Better safe than sorry, we filled
out a 
California  Department of Parks & Recreation form on the feature and the
Lead 
Agency  preserved it right along with the Coastal Sage Scrub biological
habitat. 
Thirty  years later, I still wonder if a couple of seven year olds did
not just 
create  the thing. But then the notion crosses my mind, if two children
did it 
7,000  years ago, would it make a difference?
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.



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