Rovner asks:
 
>Is this problem real or my imagination?  If real - and I read the
>traffic on this net as artifactual confirmation of the reality - is
>anybody working toward a solution to this problem?
 
Well, yes, the problem is real.  As a grad student, CRM practitioner and an
aspiring academic, I have tried to confront the problem by doing both
contracts and academic work as best I can, rather than constructing some
false prioritization of them.  However, as with the general and practical
distinction between historic and prehistoric archaeology (text), their are
experiential differences between academic and contract work.  In contract
reports, it is often very difficult to produce a meaningful and well
articulated argument about a specific project or issue because you are
forced to parse-out  your data and ideas into arbitrary traditional
categories of information such as 'culture history' and 'environmental
background' which more often than not have little or nothing to do with the
specific project and its results.  I understand why this is necessary (as a
minimum requirement standard), so I don't seriously challenge the practice.
One way around this is to publish papers as spin-offs from contract reports
which deal exclusively with relevent data, but you don't get any rewards for
this besides pats on the back .
However, there  are still other fundamental and difficult problems - like
having to design your research around impact assessment within an impact
zone, rather than employing a meaningful and statistically valid sampling
design  -  or situations where a site which is not terribly significant
whatsoever gets mandated for further work because it is more obviously
threatened.  While these kinds of work are obviously necessary and
important, they do little to allow contract archaeology to develop in an
academically useful way.  Finally, speaking of text, contract archaeology is
further bedeviled by the 'gray literature problem'.   Although many
'academic archaeologists' don't get around to widely distributing their
ideas and  data  through publication, contractors rarely have the time and
resources (and sometimes don't have the legal right) to construct broadly
disseminated publications.  We are often too busy putting together reports
to be read almost exclusively by other contract archaeologists and regulators.
 
whiningly yours,
Matt
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Matt Tomaso,  marginally human.
[log in to unmask]
Anthropology.   University of Texas at Austin.
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