bravo!

Nan Rothschild
On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, David Rotenstein wrote:

> Not that my opinion counts for much, but labels like "industrial
> archaeology", "historical archaeology", "industrial heritage", etc., are
> kind of meaningless and their deployment is more akin to marketing and
> symbolic jockeying for position rather than actual disciplinary boundaries.
> "Industrial Archaeology" is a lot like using the word "blues" to pigeonhole
> a particular musical genre and the culture that produces and consumes a
> music: it's a label slapped onto a constellation of beliefs, behaviors, and
> communication styles that allows the music and culture to be communicated
> about and sold (via bin cards in record stores and ad campaigns). It just
> goes to the point that archaeology is a tool for understanding human
> behavior that may be used by historians, anthropologists, engineers, et al.,
> and not a unified discipline. Archaeologists cannot assert ownership rights
> (physical or intellectual) to the material they excavate and the barriers to
> entry into the archaeology market are fairly low: anyone with an interest
> and assets (some tools and access to an archaeological site or artifact) can
> be an archaeologist, whether the folks with Ph.D.s and RPAs behind their
> names validate the behavior or not.
>
> David Rotenstein
>

Nan A. Rothschild
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Director of Museum Studies
Dept. of Anthropology
Columbia University
New York, NY 10027
212 854-4977

Research Professor
Dept. of Anthropology
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
212 854-4315