Ron
Thank you for the kind comments. I've been slow in responding to
HISTSRCH and also missed the SHA meeting due to a anti-bacterial
resistant staph infection. Difficult to use a computer while on your
back with your left ankle higher than your heart (some have suggested
I don't have one). A $55.00 pill seems to be curing it.
Thanks again for pointing out the real difference between Sprague and
South. The reason for the difference is that Stan worked in
isolation and I ran my ideas through several hundred students.
Rick
At 10:23 AM 1/25/2007, you wrote:
>
>I have been waiting for Rich Sprague to reply to his thread. After several
>years of attending SHA conference symposia and hearing the problems
>many people
> encountered with Stanley South's model, I elected to work with Sprague's
>functional model for analysis of collections recovered at the Ballast Point
>Whaling Station and Chinese fishing camp (CA-SDI-12953) at San Diego,
>California. I corresponded with Sprague and launched into the
>analysis, which is nearly
>complete. I expect to produce a report on this work by the end of next
>summer.
>
>My problem with the South model is that it is so static. Other people
>applied their data to the model and it simply did not work.
>Sprague's model, on the
>other hand, enables analysis of the behavioral variables within a site due
>to factors such as ethnicity, gender, and economic class. I am more
>interested
>in the variations than trying to force the data into some rigid model.
>
>Ron May
>Legacy 106, Inc.
>
>In a message dated 1/24/2007 1:18:06 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>Larry
>
>We have exchanged much of this already but HISTARCH readers may not
>be aware of some of the details. As indicated, what you are looking
>for has already been done and used with great frequency in western
>North America. It was published as: Roderick Sprague, 1981, A
>Functional Classification for Artifacts from 19th and 20th Century
>Historical Sites. North American Archaeologist, 2(3):251-261.
>
>Stan and I carried on good humored correspondence (before email) for
>many months on our different approaches to question of functional
>classifications. Statements such as "laundry lists" vs. "where and
>what I did today" were part of that correspondence and should not be
>taken seriously or misinterpreted. Why this work has been little
>used east of the Mississippi except by my former students has always
>been a mystery to me.
>
>Changes suggested, such as those by Cathy Spude, are usually ones
>that are made to make specific adjustments for some special issue and
>are encouraged. Unfortunately more often changes are made to make
>the decision process easier and generally violate the functional
>first level of decision. For example cartridges are grouped as just
>that rather than within functional groups of hunting, self defense,
>recreation, national defense, etc. This is also most often
>erroneously done with bottles and cans.
>
>Rick
>
>Roderick Sprague
>625 N Garfield St
>Moscow, ID 83843
>208-882-0413
>
>At 09:39 AM 1/22/2007, you wrote:
> >Our staff is working on the analysis of artifacts from a data recovery
> >project on a 1910s to 1940s lumber mill town, Ravensford, on the edge of
> >the Great Smoky Mountains in southwestern North Carolina. The
> >collection includes over 170,000 artifacts from 22 distinct house lots,
> >commercial lots, and several dumps.
> >
> >We are trying to adapt South's functional category scheme to serve as an
> >intermediate step in the artifact analysis. We are tweaking it to
> >accommodate 20th century items as well as to try (as others have done)
> >to minimize the inherent problems in forcing certain multifunctional or
> >ambiguous items into fixed categories.
> >
> >We are looking for references to discussions (in publications, gray
> >literature, dissertations, or meeting presentations) of similar attempts
> >at broader functional categorization of historic period artifact
> >collections, based on South or other approaches.
> >
> >Thanks in advance for any suggestions from list members.
> >
> >Larry McKee, Ph.D.
> >Branch Manager/Senior Archaeologist
> >TRC Inc.
> >1865 Air Lane Dr, Suite 9
> >Nashville TN 37210-3814
> >Office: 615 884-4430 Fax: 615 884-4431
> >Mobile: 615 482-7378
> >[log in to unmask]
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