I have just read Sue's article as she suggested in this post. I work in
Western Australia which was only founded in 1829 so I am dealing with 19th
and 20th century material exclusively. I am also working in a state which
until recently thought it was too young to have a past worth saving. We have
only had a heritage law for 10 years and when they drafted it they forgot
about archaeology because the perception was that there was no historical
archaeology worth bothering about in WA. Archaeologists in the eastern half
of Australia are also bothered by the same perception but not quite as badly
has they have a slightly longer time frame to play with.

When I first started out doing my Ph.D on frontier theory I was really hit
with this attitude but I stopped cringing when I realised that my frontier
(a second wave in the Northwest) spanned the same time period as the
American Wild West of movie frame. A period of history which I am told had a
significant impact on the American mind set while in WA I was seriously
questioned as to why I was bothering as we knew the history.

Be that as it may it made me think about what we had in WA about the world
cultural changes the state has seen and the effect they have had on the
place and the people. One reason WA thinks it has no heritage is because it
shares a common base with other western cultures. Why - globalisation,
commercialism, urbanisation etc, etc. All major western world trends which
have shaped the way we live today and which had their major impacts in the
19th and 20th centuries.

WA is a perfect place to study such changes as there is very little overlay
of older trends to blur the picture. And because of that, the picture is not
the same, WA is not a mirror image of New York, Manchester or Paris. For
instance Perth is the most spread out capital in the world, for a little
city it goes a long way. WA also has the highest log normal figure for
cities in the world (I think I got the term right, 1st year Geography was a
long time ago). What it means is that we have a major city and every thing
else is on the lower end of town or village scale. The impact of these world
trends on WA's historical geography is quite graphic it begs the question,
how it it impact on the people?

I think studying the impact of these major world trends at the level of
region, town and household could be quite exciting. I have only had the
chance to really look at changes with regards to frontier change but even
then the other trends intrude on what's happening. Of course you have to
sort out what questions the archaeological data can answer better than the
historical.

For instance when looking at Lewis's frontier theory in the Pilbara I found
that it concentrated on aspects where historical documentation was strongest
such as when and where people settled. I found gaping holes in documentation
on issues such as the extent of variation in production systems tried by
early pioneer's ( the evidence was heavily slanted towards the successful
outcome), and changes in the cultural expectation's of the pioneer's and
their material cultural expression of those expectation's. In fact looking
at individual and social group adaptation's to the frontier and market
situation they found themselves in was still a very viable area for
historical archaeology research even on a frontier with an 'embarrassment'
of documentation.

For 20th century sites the question of what types of evidence is needed to
look at major world and regional trends needs to be addressed. Also where
best to get such evidence, historical documentation or archaeological data.
We should also not be afraid to use the wealth of historical information to
frame better questions to ask of the archaeological. We have the chance to
frame much more detailed questions of our data then is possible for our
prehistoric collegues, questions which the historical documentation can
provide but not answer.


-----Original Message-----
From: Sue Renaud <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, 8 August 2000 10:16
Subject: Re: 20th Century Archaeology


>I have excavated archaeological sites of the 20th century in Phoenix,
Arizona,
>and have written and spoken about 20th-century archaeological studies.  I
>continue to propose that we need to rethink how we do archaeology when
we're
>faced with sites of the 20th century.  Approaching them the same way that
we
>approach 19th- and 18th-century sites isn't going to be very effective --
there
>are more documents related to them and there are more (way more!) of them.
In
>addition, we need to rely even more on developing innovative research
questions
>that relate directly to how groups, such as neighborhoods and communities
(not
>individuals) dealt with some of the major trends of the 20th century (e.g.,
the
>Depression, war time, etc.)
>
>I invite you to take a look at my 1995 article on "The National Register
and the
>20th Century -- Is There Room for Archeology?" in CRM, vol. 18, No.6
Supplement
>-- go to <www.cr.nps.gov/crm> and click on "Index of Past Issues."  Go down
to
>1995, find Vol. 18, and click on No.6/Sup.
>
>Sue Henry Renaud
>