Final Comment on "Landfill" Discussion.

My original comment on this issue was focused on chronology (i.e. the
20th century is just as legitimate a subject for historical archaeology
as, for example, is the 17th or 19th centuries). I was about to follow up
with a comment on the nature of the site (i.e. "landfill", actually a
municipal dump) but Mike Poke and Bill Adams have covered that well. Even
fairly artifact-free land fill, such as used in creating "made-land" around
Manhattan, can be explored with interesting results by archaeologists.

I would add, however, this possibility. In  1960 Bernard Fontana and
his colleagues excavated a site in southern Arizona because initially it
was seen as possibly being one of the oldest Jesuit mission sites in that
region. When it turned out to be a 19th-early 20th century ranch house
site they did not stop but completed the project (which involved the public
via the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society) and then wrote the
"Johnny Ward's Ranch" Report published in THE KIVA (1962). This monograph
became a "bible" for the archaeological material culture of the second part
of the 19th century and served as a basic guide for historical archaeologists
for years.

We need such guides for the ARCHAEOLOGICAL material culture of the 1930s,
1920s, 1940s etc. (or whatever time divisions selected) for the 20th
Century. The Salt Lake City project, with its apparently rich assemblage
and tight dating, might well be used to produce such a guide for the
1930s. That would be a major contribution to world wide historical
archaeology.

                                Bob Schuyler