Richard Veit's comments ring true about the power of the real thing to
inspire interest, even among very young students.  The question
remains--did the results of that dig in fact get analyzed, written up, and
disseminated in some fashion?  I presume that they did, but if not, then it
was the functional equivalent of pothunting, no matter how qualified the
supervisor was or how well-intentioned, or how much interest was inspired
among the participants.   Lots of archaeologists have also come into the
discipline from a background in collecting artifacts,  but that doesn't
mean digging for personal collections is a good thing.   Involving the
young students and the general public in systematic archaeology, and
training college students are in fact good things, and I've been heavily
involved in them through the Crow Canyon Center and in other contexts.  But
they are not the main point of archaeology.  If we don't learn something
from exploiting the archaeological record, and if we don't make that
knowledge accessible,  none of the rest of it makes any sense.   We also
can't complain that pothunters and developers are "destroying information"
if our own digs don't produce any reports, or if reports aren't in some way
made accessible to interested students and scholars.
 
Richard's recollection of his youthful experience opens the door for me to
tell some old-timer stories, which I increasingly feel qualified to do.  I
think I got many of my attitudes about these issues from Jesse Jennings,
for whom I used to work in 1958-1961, but from whom (fortunately for my
GPA) I never took a class.  Jennings used to say something like "you
haven't completed an excavation until you have reported the results."  In
other words, if you can't follow through and complete the "whole package"
you can't take credit for having done any archaeology.  All you have
succeeded in doing is destroying a site.  The implication is that you
better figure out how you are going to do the analysis and the reporting
before you pick up your shovel.  It's a professional responsibility and not
an afterthought.  Jennings was at that time heavily involved in  "salvage
archaeology" and also did not think that the fact that sites were going to
be destroyed by some other means was any reason for "salvage
archaeologists" to avoid the professional responsibility to analyze and
report, as well as to dig.
 
Before Jennings would let his students at the University of Utah (including
graduate students) participate in one of his excavations, he would require
them to take a field methods class that involved excavating a fiendishly
complicated miniature site that he personally had constructed in a
dungeon-like basement in one of the buildings on the U. of Utah campus.
The work was done with dental tools and the like, and the students had to
submit their field notes for his (always critical) evaluation.  Even at
this scale, his directive to "use the largest tool that will get the job
done" also applied, and each student was under pressure to work efficiently
and excavate as much as possible in the time allowed, consistent with
understanding the archaeological record and making detailed notes.  As I
recall, a synthetic report on the student's part of the dig was required at
the end of the class.  The point was that anyone who undertook the
excavation of a real site was accepting the responsibility for doing a good
job of it and for producing a contribution to knowledge. There was also a
responsibility to make the most out of the time and money invested in the
effort, in terms of information return.
 
Jennings--who died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 88 or 89--taught his
students and employees that the archaeological record deserved respect,
that learning something from it was its highest and best use, and that if
an archaeologist was not prepared--through training, funding, and
organization--to use that record to contribute something to the sum total
of human knowledge about the past, then he or she should not presume to
trifle with it.  He saw training in field methods as a means to accomplish
this end, not as an end in itself.    Most of us--myself included--have
sometimes failed to meet his standards, but I think they remain good ones
to shoot for.
 
Bill Lipe
 
==========
 
 
>This is an interesting discussion that is going on about real vrs. recently
>created sites.  Both sides have good arguments, but I think excavating real
>sites is preferable for anyone teaching students over elementary
>school age, provided there is adequate supervision, and some provision for
>reporting of finds and curation.  I say this because in 1976, as an eight
>year old, I had a horrible experience that shaped the rest of my life.  No, I
>wasn't forced to take piano lessons, or accosted in a dark alleyway by a
>mugger, I participated in my first archaeological excavation.  Things haven't
>been the same for me since.
>
>  The site was real, a 19th-century tavern about to be paved over, and
>unprotected by CRM legislation.  The course was taught by a local high school
>teacher who had been trained in archaeology. No, eight year olds weren't
>working laser transits or drawing profiles, but screening for artifacts
>and doing some trowelling.  The issue is simply a matter of supervision and
>giving people appropriate tasks.
>
>    More recently I have taught my own field school and done a sandbox
>excavation with elementary schoolers.  Some students in the field school had
>children and on occassion, the babysitters didn't arrive in time, so somtimes
>there were ten year olds digging with 19 year olds and 50 year olds.  The most
>challenging group to control and keep focused from my perspective was the
>traditional college students.  Sandbox archaeology is a good exercise too,
>but perhaps most suitable for the very young.
>
>    Finally, one other point, I don't think that sandbox archaeology is
>necessarily reflective of a rich or a poor society, but a pedagogical method
>employed by individuals with real ethical concerns about damaging the
>archaeological record.  Which, finally, brings me back to the "Horrible
>Experience."   It was horrible only in that it convinced me that this was
>what I wanted to do with my life, and closed the door to more remunerative
>careers.  Perhaps sandbox archaeology would have had the same experience,
>perhaps not.
>
>Richard Veit
>Department of History and Anthropology
>Monmouth University