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Tue, 21 Dec 2004 22:02:59 -0500 |
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Jim Gibb wrote:
>In a recent posting, Bill Liebeknecht announced a call for papers for the
>2005 Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference. I couldn't help noticing the
>title of a session that he proposes: Early 18th Century Sites Outside of
>the Tidewater Area--Where are they? I have recently completed work on two
>late 17th/early 18th century domestic sites, and have a third in progress,
>in Maryland's Tidewater region. All, and especially two of them, yielded
>very few artifacts from shovel testing or surface collecting. These are
>the kinds of sites that might be written off in compliance investigations.
>All three have yielded patterned subplowzone features. So my answer to
>Bill is that they may be all around us, but we may need to think very
>carefully about how to find and recognize them.
>Jim Gibb
>Annapolis, MD USA
Well, the Hudson River Valley has plenty of them, as I am sure George Myers
could tell us, not to mention that some of the most beautiful European
ceramics (delft, pipes, etc.) from the 17th century I have ever seen came
from some of the inland Iroquois sites.
Jim makes an excellent point about how sites are too often defined based on
the presence and distribution of artifacts. It reminds me of one project
that I did along a highway where half a dozen cellar holes and foundation
complexes from early 19th century structures (store, houses, barns) were
still perfectly visible to all but the project bean counter. As we stood
in the center of a 6 foot deep stone-lined foundation (we even walked in
down the old steps) he argued that since there were few artifacts there was
no data at that site and we would not proceed with further examination or
even map it other than as a documented structure site. It was no wonder
that this site and the most of the others were not chosen for Phase II.
I say one project, but really I have witnessed this kind of horrid decision
making on several projects for several different employers (except for Jim
Gibb, of course). I have also seen the reverse, where stratigraphy and the
landowner told us that the area had been filled with soil from another
source 30 years earlier yet it still went on for not only Phase II and was
fully budgeted for Phase III before I successfully got the point across
that it was disturbed. No wonder the landowner thought we were nuts and
wasting taxpayers money.
At the same time the foundations were being dismissed a bucket of
chert-bearing limestone gravel from a railroad grade was being declared an
important prehistoric site.
Dan W.
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