In a message dated 9/5/99 6:15:42 PM Mountain Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
writes:

<< Instead, I contend that an archaeologist is a generalist or he is nothing.
  >>

You know Ned, I do agree with you on a lot of points.  We probably agree more
than it appears.  I deplore a narrow focus of attention to historic sites
much as I deplored the processualists narrow focus on topics of particular
interest to them with little regard for other things that were important (in
the larger scope of archaeology).

In part, the climate of our research in this part of the world does not allow
for a lot of excavation.  Also, there are fewer privies, fewer wells and
other deep features to deal with, so we are forced to pay attention to far
more eclectic details than, perhaps, many in the eastern part of the country
do with a richer archaeological environment.  We always pay attention and
record landscape details, outbuildings, yard details such as sidewalks,
fencing, hitching posts, and other items that give clues to many activities
on properties.  In urban settings we record sidewalk stamps, sandstone
curbing and sidewalks and driveways, and a variety of eclectic details which
might normally be ignored.

Nevertheless, I still believe that anthropological understanding of these is
paramount to our field.  It is what allows us to pull together the disparate
threads of technology, demography, architecture, archaeology, history, art,
and a thousand other things that can come up during a research project.  It
is the wholistic discipline and our approach and our willingness to, at
least, attempt to pull information from these aspects of a property or region
together into a coherent whole that sets us apart from the historians, from
the architectural historians, from the technologists, from even the
sociologists.  Both literally and figuratively, we are the ragpickers of the
science of human behavior.

Mike Polk
Sagebrush Consultants, L.L.C.
Ogden, Utah