Adrian and Larry are just about to run into a logical brick wall.

The fact is that we can't predict what a site will reveal until we dig it.
I have never seen a site devoid of valuable information. Sorry fellows.

Because every person is different, and every site represents the efforts of
one or more different, individual, and creative people, they all are
different. There just aren't any mute stones, or mute machines, or mute
dishes, for that matter.

Have we dug enough foundries? The ironworking industry changed every year
during the nineteenth century. Ideas were banging around like balls in a
lottery machine. The iron and steel institute was publishing thick bound
volumes every year, full of industry intelligence. The nineteenth century
was the iron and steel century. Iron and steel centers were the silicon
valley of their day, full of the idea people and the entrepreneurs.

I submit that we might exhaust the possibilities someday, if we were to
identify every combination of possible technological innovation during the
period, together with every personal accommodation to every possible
working condition. The possibilities are endless. All you need to do is
keep your eyes open and your brain in gear.

But if you just want to dig by the formula, to put another notch on your
Marshalltown, we have certainly no justification to dig another foundry.
Approach a site with a ho-hum attitude, and you will find a ho-hum site.
Clients like that. Bored consultant finds boring site. Crew of boring field
techs, led by exceptionally boring crew chief, execute prescribed plan.
SHPO falls asleep reading the report. SHPO eventually wakes up, rested and
fit, and declares the site ineligible.

I don't think we should work that way. We should approach sites to squeeze
that last drop of information from them. Every site is an opportunity to
exercise the little grey cells.

We aren't digging for the edification of our clients. The people who pay
us, generally speaking, couldn't care less about archaeology; they want
federal "clearance" for their project. I love it when they say they enjoyed
reading the report, but they still have to pay me, even if I write a boring
report.

On more than one occasion, I have had to plead with the SHPO to let me dig
a "boring" site that turned out to be loaded with really neat new
information. Even a boring SHPO can be awakened to the possibilities of a
site.



RUSH LIMBAUGH ON NATIVE AMERICANS: "The Native Americans were
      _____        meaner to themselves than anybody was ever
 ____(_____)__     mean to them. The people were savages. It's
  |Baby the\            true, they damn well were ... These
  |1969 Land\_|===|_    people were out there destroying timber.
  |  ___Rover   ___ |o  They were out there conquering land.
  |_/ . \______/ . ||   Killing each other. Scalping People."
  ___\_/________\_/____________________________________________
  Ned Heite, Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html