(I'm a student, so I may be putting my neck on a block and handing someone
an ax, but...)

A pot-hunter rips stuff out of the ground, washes the crud off it, and
hocks it or puts it on a shelf or in a barrel to admire. An archaeologist
painstakingly excavates a site, uses deionized water to carefully clean the
artifacts he recovered, and curates everything in a climate-controlled
warehouse. What's the difference? I would maintain that, at this
point,  there is none. The difference comes later.  The archaeologist
analyzes what he has found, carefully describes it, draws conclusions based
on the material he's recovered and his subsequent research, and publishes
the whole thing, publicly tossing his skeet up for others to shoot at.
Whether his conclusions are accepted or refuted, the net result is some
incremental increase in overall knowledge about the past. The key is the
PUBLICation  and doing so in a forum that is accessible to as many other
people - professionals, interested amateurs, students, curiosity seekers,
anyone - as possible. I'm not convinced that it's possible to consider as
"publication"  the sending of a single copy of a report to a company, a
governmental agency, or even a university unless there is some means to get
at least an abstract widely disseminated and to allow the report itself to
occasionally emerge from its hidden file.
         Yes, I realize there are funding problems to be faced, but I
question if any project, archaeological or otherwise, has ever been really
"properly" funded. The must-have elements are still completed. Perhaps it's
time to consider proper publication as a must-have element?

Robert C. Leavitt
UNR Retread Student

At 1/20/00 13:28 , you wrote:
>I sure hit pay dirt this morning eh?
>
>(2 paragraphs clipped out)
>
>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.
> >

Cogito, ergo cogito sum.