You're right, "it doesn't take a whole lot of training and education to
have valid and/or siginifcant opinions on archaeological interpretations"
-- but I find they are rarely informed opinions.  It's true that I could
look at a piece of pottery and say something intelligent about it as a
non-archeologist, but could I recognize the difference between a piece of
funeral urn and a piece of cookware?  I doubt my abilities in this area.
 
I'll tell you a story (uh-oh, here it comes....).  My grandmother built the
house in the Ozarks in which she raised 9 children alone.  The house was
sold when she became too sick, and it was subsequently hit by lighting and
destroyed several years after her death.  Four years ago, my mother and my
daughter and I went down to raid her old flower beds and, while I was
poking around in the ruins which (by that time) certainly might have
qualified as an archeological dig, I found a rusty metal gadget.  My mother
and I both ventured opinions as to what it was, but we really didn't know.
We were both qualified to speak on the subject of the gadget because she
lived much of her childhood years in that house, and I was a bright young
graduate student in history and had read the life story of the woman who
built the house.  Despite our close connection to the site, we could
neither identify the gadget, nor explain its purpose and significance to
the people who had lived in the house.  I hazard to assert, however, that
whatever the failings of our educational system, an archeologist, black,
white, or green, who had received training in early 20th century American
rural archeology, could identify that gadget, or know how to go about
finding the information needed to explain its presence in the house.
 
William M. Reger IV
(217)352-6930
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Department of History           Voc. & Tech. Ed.
309 Gregory Hall, UIUC          345 Education Bldg., UIUC
(217) 333-1155                  (217) 333-0807