Just checked the Norfolk District website (my employer, the Norfolk
District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) where we used to have some images of
graffiti on the walls of one of the buildings in Fort Norfolk (c. 1810 -
part of the original coastal defense network). The grafitti had been left by
soldiers held captive there during th Civil War. I'll root around and see if
they don' show up somewhere else. My understanding of Section 106, is that
the archaeologist is required to report ANY and ALL resources that might be
significant encountered during investigations for 106 regardless of whether
or not they relate the items specificied in the original documents (MOA or
whatever).
To fail to do so, would be like saying, "Well, we didn't find the remains of
the 1810 Fort, and we're not reporting the Paleo-Indian site that we
encountered while looking for it, because it wasn't specified in our
contract. This highlights the intense foolishness of saying that Section 106
investigations should be "confined to the original research design"
specified in the investigation agreement. Using the "research design" as an
excuse to ignore resources not called out in that document is
unprofessional, irresponsible and unethical. This should not be a question
for any professional archaeologist.
I lived across the street from a machinist here in Richmond who worked for
many years for the Reynolds Aluminium Company, on a team that developed and
continued (and probably continues) developing the pull-tab. These guys don't
write journal articles for "Journal of aluminum technology"; they're
practical factory guys. Product vendors don't usually design or manufacture
the containers into which their beverages are placed for sale; they buy them
from suppliers, like Reynolds, and use them at their "bottling" or filling
facilities. The can manufacturers are intimately involved in the sale and
set-up of filling machinery, but with some possible exceptions, don't
dictate to the producers which technology to use at a particular location.
Tieing the type of pull tab to a particular product probably only has
efficacy at the regional level, or even more locally, depending on the
product, where decisions about what filling technology to use at a
particular filling plant are made. The failure to recognize this allows the
projection of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century technology,
inappropriately, into the twentieth century.
Go back and study Henry Miller's research on the development of Owens
process bottle production to get a feeling for the complexity of twentieth
century product delivery and don't fall into the trap of applying
anachronistic analytical techniques to materials for which they are not
appropriate.
Tim T.
bottled in pedantic bond
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