I sure hit pay dirt this morning eh?

I don't like the legalistic answer to this question. Obviously there are
certain places where pothunting is forbidden and the majority of enthusiasts
(for lack of a better term) obey those laws. In fact many are also very
interested and involved in the preservation movement. I am thinking here of
the heavy overlap in the Civil War reenactor/pothunter/battlefield
preservation worlds. Most pothunting is legal and I don't see how people
involved in a legal activity can be outlaws as John Dendy seems to suggest.
I think we need to better understand this world. There are many pasts and
many conflicting ways to interact with them--it does us no good to insist
that ours is exclusively the right one. It certainly does not save sites.

Nevertheless they are our competitors--and competitors with whom we have a
complex relationship as Kevin suggests. Public sphere and public interest
are abstractions that obscure rather than clarify. True Congress grants
archaeologists stewardship in many cases, but the right is not exclusive and
all encompassing. Furthermore if the authority of our opposition to
pothunting lies with the stewardship what happens when the government that
granteth, taketh away? With the stroke of a pen a budget cutter could end or
"privatize" stewardship of the public's material patrimony. What happens
then, would the argument simply end? Relying on the "guardianship" argument
is too tenuous for me--I want a better case.

What does our stewardship mean to a woman who turns up a bunch of bottles
and creamware in her yard? Is she a renegade for keeping them in a box or
selling them at an antique mall? For me I feel, at the emotional level, a
deep discomfort if she sells them. But is that feeling tied to anything more
than self preservation--again I ask is there a moral or transcendent
argument against these activities?


-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin M Bartoy <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, January 20, 2000 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: clandestine digging or dough


>Well ... I don't think that medicine is an appropriate analogy for this
>situation since people actually ... at least at times ... need medicine
>to live. However ... people do not need archaeology to live ... and in
>fact ... it may be argued that they don't need the past at all.
>
>Whenever I hear that common statement along the lines of "knowing our
>past so that we don't repeat our mistakes" ... I am always struck by the
>fact that it is seldom heeded. History is little more than a chronicle of
>repititious mistakes. If we truly wanted to learn from the past ... there
>are many examples that could give us great insight as to our present
>predicament.
>
>I think what this discussion really started as was an evaluation of what
>the past means and perhaps what is the use, value, etc. of the past in
>relation to our present. I think it is rather pompous of us to think that
>we operate on a "public mandate" ... especially when archaeologists seldom
>involve themselves in the public sphere beyond their self-interests.
>
>Kevin.
>