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.