Lest we forget, many of the archaeologists in state or federal
government agencies (outside the 106 process) are actually
contracting officers. They don't do archaeology as much as they
direct the archaeological efforts of contractors.

I seriously doubt that even the Bush administration would be so
ignorant as to assign contracting responsibilities to someone who is
not a federal employee.  Never say never, but if there is no
archaeologist in the agency's office, who will identify the places
where archaeology is needed? Who will select the archaeological
contractor? Who will write the specifications? Who will evaluate the
work products of the contractors? Who will put in place the results
of the archaeological work? In my humble opinion, these functions
need to be performed by a qualified professional who represents the
interest of the public agency.

Those of us who do archaeological consulting are painfully aware of
the complexities of contracting to do archaeology for clients who
haven't a clue about archaeology. Most of my clients are not
archaeologists, and a large proportion are hostile to paying so much
money for a bunch of broken dishes.  Only the agency archaeologists
keep things moving.

So what happens when that client is the state or federal government,
and there is no government agency archaeologist to address the
various issues?  Are we going to have archaeology contracts written
and supervised by park rangers who are nothing but glorified traffic
cops, or engineers who don't understand anything that isn't concrete
flatwork? I jest, of course. At least, I hope I jest.

The bottom line is that outsourcing on this scale would mean that no
meaningful archaeology would be done. Doesn't that seem to be what
Bush and the Bushies are trying to do?
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For any awkward moment, in any conversation,
there is always an appropriate, or insanely
inappropriate, limerick.