Although I cannot take on reading/editing a set of guidelines, I would be
interested in a discussion regarding archival research in general. Earlier in my
career in California, I realized my anthropology and archaeology background
and general survey courses in history to be insufficient to understand or
make good decisions in historic research. As such, I entered a public history
program and took night courses to learn research, writing, and other topics of
value in the historical archaeology profession. Going back a bit further in
my career, I distinctly recall the frustration in the 1969-1970 time period in
which agency engineers either blew-off bridges (actually, blew them up),
barns, old roads, various buildings, cemeteries, and standing Native American
structures, but usually listened to prehistoric archaeologists in project
planning. In those early days, none of the academic faculty historians came
forward or would respond to agency or consultant requests for advice (at least here
in California). As Tom King has noted, archaeologists in the early stages of
forming the environmental reviews of the 1969-1975 time period simply filled
the void and applied their own standards for what is important. The National
Register program also developed in that period and ended up being a very
complicated process in which history is treated separately from archaeology,
even though the two are actually one. Eventually, as the history field
dramatically sagged in classroom enrollment, the new field of public history emerged.
As well, academic historians in California like Dorothy Theodoratus, Ph.D.
(might have that spelling wrong) stridently advocated change and vocally
demonstrated at Society for California Archaeology conferences demanding academic
historians be hired into the process. There were many profound changes
between 1969 and the late 1970s that advanced the need for professional historians
or history-trained archaeologists to deal with agency-financed destruction of
historical properties. And, I might add, here in California the local
planning process developed an industry independent of what became the federal
Section 106 process. Now in its 37th year of existence, the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has generated careers for historians and archaeologists
alike. But there remains fundamentally different approaches to historical
primary documents when it comes to academic historians and archaeologists. This
is much like dealing with geologists, who see broad periods of rock
formation and land transformation process over millions of years. Historians
interested in theory have difficulty dealing with the nitty-gritty of sheep farms,
small towns, or individual buildings. The problem has been that the agencies
requesting historical work or importance assessments often find historians and
archaeologists at odds. I distinctly recall a conversation with Donald
Cutter, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico, who smirked when he
recalled reading archaeology reports of "significant" finds. During my career
with the County of San Diego (retired now), I continued to disagree with
consulting historians over the importance of buildings, old roads, rock walls, and
trash features. Even today, I perform entirely different in-depth historical
studies (_www.legacy106.com_ (http://www.legacy106.com) ) than my history
colleagues who tend to ignore the nitty-gritty of archival research. Given
these fundamental issues that I have sketched, how can we develop a meaningful
set of guidelines on archival research without first defining the goals?
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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