But did Buffalo's Big Dig do more for history (and historical archaeology)
than it did to satisfy the visceral treasure-hunters' dreams? I think most
people on HISTARCH have experienced emergency salvage projects where the laws
either did not exist or circumstances required heroic action, but the problem
with rush jobs is there is no provision for carry-through in the cleaning,
conservation, cataloguing, and long-term curation. Usually, this results in a
massive dumping of all but the antique-quality items. Did the visceral
entertainment value of the Big Dig result in a true recovery for posterity? Only time
will tell.
Back in the 1979-1981 time period, California land developers and real
estate lobbyists made a push to remove the word "archaeology" from the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA, as noted by "shrineinfo," is our local
equivalent of NEPA). Leaders of the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) held
an emergency meeting at the San Jose Airport and then a follow-up meeting in
Fresno, California at the SCA Annual Meeting to raise BIG money to hire
Ternes & Houston, a professional lobby firm in Sacramento, who would help counter
the devastating propaganda spread by the developer's lobbyists. We hatched a
plan to return home and dream up catchy archaeology projects to get news
coverage and then ship the stream of articles to Ternes & Houston to be
strategically plopped on key lawmaker's desks just before committee hearings on what
would be known as "AB 952." Assembly Bill 952 was written to remove
archaeology from CEQA and sponsored by Assemblyman Waddie Deddeh, who had been promised
funding for his senatorial run if he pushed the bill. My contribution was to
generate news coverage on an all volunteer (100-person crew) "Lost Spanish
Fort Dig" on the Naval Submarine Base in San Diego. And a steady stream of
news coverage it was for the summer of 1981 (not to mention 1982-1996). By 1996,
we had about 400 boxes of artifacts that needed to be processed, conserved,
catalogued, and reported. I had my hands full for the following 25-years, and
this was in my "spare time." As I have reported elsewhere on HISTARCH, the
whole collection has been cared-for professionally (although with nearly no
funding) and is now in a nice HVAC facility with excellent security and is used
for academic research. And, we published a series of papers and an online
series of articles. But my point here is not to wax on about the discoveries,
or even how we fueled thousands of citizens to stand behind archaeology in our
darkest hour in Sacramento, or even how the State Legislature managed to
retain archaeology in CEQA. My point is that no matter why we rush out to do an
emergency dig, we need to be prepared to devote a large part of our lives to
see the project through to the end. It is my hope Buffalo's Big Dig will
accomplish the same in the years to come.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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