My colleague and I wrote a bit about this in Harold Mytum’s book on field schools, with an industrial archaeology/urban archaeology slant. In there we cite some USA, Canadian, and UK/EU resources, including the Poirier and Feder book (which is fantastic), but this topic is largely not published in archaeology literature. Health and Safety is mostly covered in the vast training resources to be found in the professional world, outside of academic publications.
It is really important to me both personally and professionally that we talk with new professionals about these issues, because like Daniel, I’ve been afflicted with several of the things identified in Poirier and Feder’s book which took (and take) a cost on my health. So I hope nobody thinks of this as self-promotion, but I’m sharing the relevant text of our chapter with two key footnotes:
Scarlett, Timothy J., and Sweitz, Samuel (2012) Constructing New Knowledge in Industrial Archaeology. In Archaeological Field Schools: Constructing Knowledge and Experience, H. Mytum, editor, pp. 119-146. Springer, New York.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-0433-0_8 <http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-0433-0_8>
8.8 “Don’t Trip on the Mining Machinery While Enjoying the Virgin Splendor of This Wilderness!” Or “…and Then the Test Trench Groundwater Dissolved the Styrofoam Coffee Cup!”
IA also puts field school students at the center of cultural debates about industrial
production and environmental sustainability. Industrial heritage complicates often easy
alliances between heritage preservation and environmental restoration or open space
movements. These tensions are perfectly captured in The Michigan State
Historic Site marker along the road into the Porcupine Mountains State Park. The
marker reads in part, “Machinery, rock dumps, and old adits are ghostly reminders
of forty mining ventures in the years from 1846 to 1928…. Some logging took place
around 1916…. Finally in 1945 the area was made a state park to preserve its virgin
splendor.” The students in our most recent field trip found this paradoxical marker
hysterical, as they trudged into the woods to see this virgin (that is unsullied,
unspoiled, modest, and initial) example of industry in the woods of far northern
Michigan.
Students usually come to our field school with a simplistic notion of “industry vs.
environment.”……
IA often brings research teams to “brownfields,” “Superfund sites,” and
other degraded and contaminated landscapes that by no stretch of the imagination
can be considered “virgin,” yet contain great potential to yield material evidence of
human industrial activity (Quivik 2000, 2007 ; Symonds 2004, 2006 ; White 2006 ) .
Many of these sites and landscapes pose serious threat to people’s health. We tell
our students a story about IA and urban-sites archaeology in which the Styrofoam
cup serves as the punch line about the hazards of doing archaeology in urban and
industrial settings. In this archetypal story, a colleague working in the backhoe
trench began to develop a headache and noticed a funny smell. The crew chief
passed down an empty coffee cup for the person to scoop up a groundwater sample
that they could later have analyzed. In a matter of seconds, chemicals in the water
dissolved the Styrofoam cup. Everyone immediately scrambled out of the excavation
and work came to a halt as the team realized they were facing a potential medical
emergency.
Unfortunately, this story is neither allegorical nor is it exaggerated; rather this
cautionary tale and others like it serve to warn IA students away from a cavalier
“cowboys of science” mentality that can be found in both general archaeology and IA.
We think that English archaeologists led the way addressing health and safety concerns,
when the Council for British Archaeology published a pamphlet explaining
legally required safety requirements (Fowler 1972 ) . Through the 1990s in the United
States, a growing list of professional publications drew attention to the heath hazards
of both field- and museum-based studies involving archaeological (McCarthy 1994 ;
Flannigan 1995 ; Poirier and Feder 2001 ) , forensic (Fink 1996 ; Walsh-Haney et al.
2008 ) , and ethnographic or natural history collections (Odegaard and Sadongei 2005 ) .
In the United States, the caviler archaeological mentality began to wane as professional
practice developed largely within the Society of Professional Archaeology,
particularly in their publication, the SOPA Newsletter (cf. Murdock 1992 ; Garrow
1993 ; Fink and Engelthaler 1996 ) and Federal Archaeology (cf. Flannigan 1995 ) .
This trend culminated in the publication of Dangerous Places: Heath, Safety, and
Archaeology (Poirier and Feder 2001 ) . Safe and professional practices have begun to
percolate into introductory fi eld manuals to varying degrees. 8
All archaeology conveys risks to health and safety: confined spaces excavation,
pathogens and occupational diseases, unstable historic architecture, temperature
stress, sharp tools, toxic plants and venomous animals, and even the crew’s social
practices are all concerns (Langley and Abbott 2000 ) . By its very nature, however,
IA will more often bring professional, student, and avocational practitioners into
contact with hazardous threats. One half of Dangerous Places examines hazards
posed by colonial and industrial activity (of particular note are Hatheway 2001 ;
Roberts 2001 ; Saunders and Chandler 2001 ; Reno et al. 2001 ) . Industrial processes
like tanning leather, making paper, dyeing textile, extracting metals for ore, and
founding steel all involve chemicals like amyl acetate, sulfuric and other acids,
hydrogen chloride, benzene, naptha phenol, toluene, and elements such as lead,
arsenic, mercury, chlorine, and chromium. We deal with so much rusted iron that we
strongly recommend TETANUS vaccinations for all team members and we occasionally
had discussions about unexploded ordinance (UXO) while at the West
Point Foundry; fortunately however, we have not lead a field crew into a highly
contaminated site. Team leaders should research and anticipate health and safety
risks posed by each new project. This should be part of their preparations for the
study, often in collaboration with environmental scientists and public health professionals.
Many government health services and NGOs also provide ready access to
information about occupational health. 9
As a department, we created the Ph.D. in Industrial Heritage and Archaeology, in
part, to establish closer ties between the academic study of industrial heritage sites
and social and environmental consequences of industrial wealth production.
Industrial activities transformed (and continue to transform) the world as never
before in the human experience. While our students might study a particular industrial
site or community, they also face the living community’s struggles with the
consequences of producing industrial wealth in a capitalist world. Heritage preservation
seems to be a great idea, and archaeological heritage easily links with intangible
cultural heritage and environmental heritage conservation, until effl uent from
a heritage site is linked to cancer in children living downstream. Those same youngsters,
however, live as part of an industrial community with rich and textured relations
to their heritage sites and landscapes, as does any other stakeholder group or
decent community with any other type of heritage. “Hard places” and landscapes, as
Robertson ( 2006 ) wrote, often become enduring expressions of shared physical
work, risk, and sacrifi ce that are important to family and community.
Individual students on Michigan Tech’s IA Field Teams are forced, along with the
project as a collective, to reconcile the fact that academic research is performed in
the contemporary world. Creating new knowledge includes social and political outcomes
beyond academic research questions. Students are shocked to fi nd that some
community stakeholders see them as neocolonial tools of the wealthy, urban, and
educated elite that employ environmental or historic preservation laws to preserve
quaint, picturesque landscapes for vacation, while other community members are
happily bending the fi eld school process to meet their own private political or social
objectives. The subtleties and complexities of these social negotiations are normal
in IA, and projects must often struggle to reconcile advocacy for environment and
advocacy for various descendent-, local-, and other stakeholder communities
(McGuire with the Ludlow Collective 2008 : 216–217).
8 Typical examples of health and safety concerns addressed in these books include brief mentions
of regulations regarding excavations in deep trenches (Black and Jolly 2003 :61, 64–65; Carmichael
et al. 2003 :52; Purdy 1996 :96); recommendation to get a tetanus booster and pay up on your insurance
policy (McMillon 1991 ) ; a discussion of disease risk and prevention, proper tool use, hygiene,
and a paragraph about deep trenches, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
standards, state safety checklists, and legal liability waiver forms (Hester et al. 1997 :110–112);
discussions of employee safety training, regulations and shoring regarding deep excavations, cold
temperatures, and working in the woods during hunting season (Neumann and Sanford 2001 :68,
160–161, 186–189); and emergency fi rst aid and strategies for dealing with disaster (Kipfer
2007 :171–179, 193, 212). British and Australian archaeologists have done a much better job
including careful discussions of safety and health issues, and we point to Roskams’s ( 2001 :82–92)
extensive discussion of issues in a dedicated section of his manual, but also point to the fact that
he has also made themes of safe and careful professional practice a regular part of the narrative
throughout the book. Heather Burke and Claire Smith, along with Larry Zimmerman, also included
extensive discussion about health and safety issues in their fi eld handbooks (Burke and Smith
2004 ; Burke Smith and Zimmerman 2007 :134, 194–196; Smith and Burke 2007 :96–108, 117–
123). This last set of books also hints that fi eld manuals with discussions of Industrial Archaeology
and Urban Archaeology among the spectrum of archaeological practice give more serious thought
to health and safety policy and practice (along with those directed toward students seeking to
become Cultural Resources Management professionals).
9 Examples of these resources include The United States Department of Labor’s OSHA publication
of standards and guidelines for excavation as well as standardized format guidelines for Material
Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for chemicals. The MSDS format includes information on handling and
storage, toxicity, fi re risk, and fi rst aid procedures and has been widely adopted by other government
and NGO groups, such as the provincial health services of Canada ( http://msds.ohsah.bc.ca/ ).
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and the European Chemicals
Agency (ECHA) compiled the standards and practices of member states, including details like the
Globally Harmonized System for the Classifi cation and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).
> On May 13, 2016, at 12:39 PM, Davis, Daniel (KYTC) <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> There's a 2001 book called "Dangerous Places: Health, Safety, and Archaeology", which was edited by David Poirier and Kenneth L. Feder and published by Bergin and Garvey. It includes chapters on Lyme disease, rabies, Valley Fever, hantavirus, histoplasmosis, mold, smallpox, parasites, arsenic, hazmat, unexploded ordnance, and lead. It doesn’t cover skin cancer, bad knees or backs, snake or spider bites, bee stings, angry dogs, suspicious/armed land owners, bulls, bears, boars, falling trees, lightning, or tornadoes, but hey, those go without saying, right? Or maybe those things just happen to me - in which case, anyone know how to break a curse?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Linda Derry
> Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 9:40 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Button or medallion??
>
> Is there a report on occupational diseases linked to a career in archaeology? I remember talk of a desert fever back in the 80's and a colleague recently suggested a lifetime in the sun leads to cataracts, and I always assumed there would be bad knees or backs as we aged and perhaps a
> high rate of skin cancer, but is any of this true? And how about higher
> rates of Lyme disease?
>
>
> Linda Derry
> Site Director, Old Cahawba Archaeological Park Alabama Historical Commission
> 9518 Cahaba Road, Orrville, AL 36767
> park: 334/ 872-8058
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 7:28 AM, Keith Doms <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> It is an English button missing its shankLate 18th early 19th century.
>>
>> Keith R. Doms
>> Newlin Grist Mill
>> Site Manager
>> 219 S. Cheyney Rd.
>> Glen Mills, PA 19342
>> (610) 459-2359
>> [log in to unmask]
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Linda Hylkema
>> Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2016 1:07 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Button or medallion??
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a very small 'flat button' with the words 'superior warranted'
>> on one side. I'm assuming it is a British button, but I've also seen
>> medallions for saws with the same words. Based on the size (slightly
>> bigger than 1cm in diameter), I'm assuming that is is a button. Can
>> anyone confirm what this is?
>>
>>
>> http://s1172.photobucket.com/user/Linda_Hylkema/library/warranted%20su
>> perior%20button
>>
>> Thanks in advance!!
>>
>> Linda
>>
>> Linda Hylkema, RPA
>> *Director, Cultural Resource Management, Santa Clara University*
>> W: *408-554-4513 <408-554-4513>* | C: *408-219-5748 <408-219-5748>* |
>> Ricard Observatory | 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053
>>
|
