Carl,
To be fair to the archaeology profession, I can tell you that in 1969-1971
there were no historians stepping up to the plate to help federal development
agencies deal with old buildings, bridges, roads, railroads, and buried
historic and prehistoric sites. Archaeologists like Tom King, who became a
firebrand at federal public meetings began advocating all those sites be protected
under the evolving federal laws, policies, and regulations. Oh sure, over time
historians, demographers, and their ilk came forward to claim a piece of the
pie by the late 1970s. In fact, that is when public history arose to the fore
because so many other disciplines woke up to the enormous public interest in
old relics and ruined buildings.
There is an even more ugly side to this dilemma. These are the lobbyists who
float around the federal, state, and local agencies pawning themselves off
as purveyors of expertise in everything from biology to old buildings and
archaeology. Many of the lobbyists are lawyers who take advantage of the fact
that agencies do not require qualifications for project managers. These
lobbyists have the ear of agencies and often advise on what they consider historic. A
case example is the Coronado Railroad, which passes through the cities of
San Diego, National City, Chula Vista, and Coronado and spanned 1888 to 1943.
The lobbyist/attorney/purveyors of expertise hired the best consultants money
could buy to dismiss the archaeological remains of the railroad as "not
historic." They even managed to convince the State Historical Resources Commission
to delist the site from the National Register because the buildings are gone
and segments of the rail are missing (hence lacking in integrity, but
then...isn't that industrial archaeology?). Save Our Heritage Organization defeated
the Port of San Diego and then the City of San Diego in lawsuits over the
historical importance of the Coronado Railroad and won this past summer. In
truth, few archaeologists are as sharp and clever as those lobbyists and their
lackey consultants who would destroy America's heritage.
Sorry about the rant, Carl, but there are reasons older archaeologists are
not in step with the new historical organizations that have come into the fold
in the past 25 years.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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