Having entered old fartism into this conversation, I was intrigued to
hear Thomas Langhorne's experience, which is much like my own. I can
remember being the grad school whiz kid with the table digitizers,
SYMAP, Tektronix scopes and reams of Fortran code to bolster my
understanding of the world of the past. I advocated stcking every
known site on SPSS or SAS. Over time, and lots of experience, I came
to feel that there certainly is a place for technbology in
archaeology--lots of places really--but too many people continue to
use it for its own sake. Perhaps that's how we learn what works and
what doesn't, but for me, I consider all the thousands of wasted
hours and dollars that went into programming and analyzing which
might have more productively gone to reading, reflecting, fondling
artifacts, or digging another few squares.
 
Dan Mouer
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