I never deny that artifacts are important, vital tools of our trade. Linda
Derry's comment about stratigraphy was also good.  However, if we want to
talk about the most important tool in our trade, hands down its our brain.
Artifacts are wonderful and they are what people most identify us with, but
what happens when that's all that you have?  Generally, you have a bucket
load of junk without a context in which to understand it.  In most section
106 cases, such a site becomes an ineligible property and is blown off - like
a number of trash dumps that we recently recorded.  They had wonderful early
20th Century stuff there, some great for comparative work, but what do you do
with something in space?  move on......

One of the most important and exciting aspects of HISTORIC archaeology, and
the biggest reason that we call it HISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY is that it allows us
to combine several major sources of data to arrive at answers to important
questions, to be able to help explain why people did what they did and what
they did.  In addition to artifacts and stratigraphy we have archival
documents, maps and histories.  We also, many times, can do oral histories
and interviews with people who actually lived where we are digging.  Using
our brain to put those disparate sources of data together allows for a much
fuller understanding of our past than could ever be done through just
histories or archaeology alone.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but Ned's comments seem too narrow in
focus.   I don't really disagree with you, Ned, but there can be just too
much emphasis put on any one aspect of a field.  Who knows what kinds of data
sets may emerge in the future to rival the value of artifacts or other
sources of information?  Technology, for example, may provide us unparalleled
sources of historical or site information.  A small one that I ran across
recently is a new camera and film that allows one to read historic
inscriptions on rocks along the emigrant trails that are not otherwise
visible.  That opens whole new possibilities of data that were not heretofore
available.  But, of course, those data sets, too, must be understood by
comparing them against and integrating them with historical information and,
as available, archaeological data.

Mike Polk
Sagebrush Consultants, L.L.C.
Ogden, Utah