Dan Mouer is right. He did great work at Jordan's point through CRM. I
would like to think that some of our projects for the Delaware Department
of Transportation have been pretty solid contributions, too.
But all CRM practitioners are not Dan Mouer and VCU, and all sponsors are
not the Delaware Department of Transportation. If CRM could be defined in
terms of these examples, I would have no argument. Unfortunately these are
the exceptions.
Back in the early seventies, before CRM became an industry, many of us
hoped that "compliance" with section 106 would mean that priceless sites
would be excavated by researchers. Money would come available for people
like Dan Mouer to dig important sites like Jordan's Journey (lucky fool!).
This happened.
Jay Custer transformed Delaware highway contracts into a statewide research
program upon which he built a sizable body of literature. As Dan Mouer so
eloquently pointed out, CRM has given us thousands of site identifications
that would not have been there if the states had continued with the
old-style, state-funded, archaeological surveys.
My argument is with the creation of the CRM industry, as part of the
compliance branch of the engineering profession. The role of today's CRM
archaeologist is to provide "clearance" at the lowest possible price.
Archaeology is just another item on the environmental checklist, to be
dealt with as quickly, cheaply, and quietly as possible. The engineering
approach is paramount, because engineering, not scholarship, is the name of
the game.
Why are we not indignant when archaeology is reduced to nothing but a
"compliance" line on an engineering checklist?
Good archaeology has come from engineering firms and engineer-commissioned
CRM projects. But, in my experience, a great deal of the product is pure
garbage. It complies with the letter of the regulations, punches all the
checklists at exactly the right points, and contributes absolutely nothing
to the sum of human knowledge. In so many "engineered" archaeology
projects, the reports are exactly, to the letter, the minimum acceptable
under the very low standards enforced by state offices.
Nobody asks exciting questions on these "engineered" archaeological
projects. There is no room for chasing hunches, or seeking answers to
questions that were not pre-packaged by the SHPO. So many of these
engineered CRM reports are written without dreams, without inspiration,
without a sense of the pageantry of the human experience.
Should we be surprised? Where in the engineering specifications of a bridge
do you include the ceramic trade of seventeenth-century China, or the
everyday life of cotton mill workers? What landfill operator wants to
spend money to understand the foodways of antebellum free blacks?
Clearly, the problem with CRM archaeology is not the archaeology but the dream.
Thirty years ago we dreamed of a time when scholars would have enough money
to study significant sites in all their richness. Instead, the money has
been spent on boring contracts that have produced boring, soulless reports
for people who care only to get "compliance" as cheaply as possible.
Today's "good" archaeological report is one that costs little and causes
the least fuss. A well-engineered CRM project will not find sites, or will
demonstrate that there are none in the way of the project. That is good
engineering, but sometimes it is lousy archaeology.
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. | _ | | --] Ned Heite, <DARWIN><
. =(O)-----(O)= Camden, DE 19934 / \ / \
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