Time for my weekly addition to this thread:

I've asked for definitions of anthropology, because I see a problem
developing in this argument.  We seem to be advancing a position in which
we call anthropological archaeology bad archaeology, because it destroys
historic-period archaeological resources, as in the infamous railroad berm
example.  This can happen, and has happened; superposition places most
historic-period resources above most prehistoric-resources on sites having
both components, and, at times, the training, interests and "professional"
attitude ("if it ain't rocks, it ain't real") of some prehistorians leads
to a cavalier attitude (an overly-charitable description) towards the
things they find on top of what they're really interested in.  The fact
that a later, contiguous historic occupation can and often does disturb a
prehistoric occupation doesn't help.

But, I do not see this bad archaeology, this unprofessional behavior, this
incompetence as being "anthropological."  The impression arises because
prehistorians are, and have been since Binford (er, since Willey and
Phillips; I already made that mistake) anthropologists, due to the
historical fact that, in America, anthropologists study "other people," and
the Native Americans displaced by European-, African- and Asian-Americans
over the past 500 years fit this definition quite closely.  Us Euros see
our heritage coming from Athens, Rome, London, not Cahokia, Tenotichlan,
Cuzco, etc.  Thus, prehistorians are anthropologists, and we are not, only
if we see anthropologists as studying "others," and if we see anthropology
as having little relevance to our desire to understand ourselves (our
history, our archaeology) more completely.

I would still maintain that we are anthropologists, if we ask
anthropological questions.  There's also a thread here that denigrates
these questions as irrelevant, especially as being overly-concerned with
domestic sites.  Again, this is a question of practice, not of a
fundamental flaw in research design.  This time, the practice comes out of
the training, publication history, and, perhaps, the "usual site" in
historical archaeology as it has been undertaken in the U.S. since
Jamestown and Williamsburg.  We are trained on domestic sites, we know
domestic material culture, and we encounter domestic sites more often than
not (I'm out on a limb here, which someone may saw off--with data, please),
especially in CRM.  So, we can write our own historical-archaeology horror
stories, such as that about the archaeologists at the millrace who
discovered that water flows downhill.

I agree with the posting(s) from an earlier week which argued that
anthropological questions and research design can be applied in any sort,
or on any part, of a site.  It is obvious that you will not understand, and
you will misinterpret, a blast furnace site if you know so little about the
stack, charcoal burners, trip-hammer mill, races, etc. that you regard them
as "ancillary structures."  You will also misinterpret this site if you
ignore the workers' housing for fear of some sort of over-concentration on
the domestic areas of the site.  The anthropological questions that can be
addressed from the information that the site contains can only be addressed
by studying, by asking such questions, of the whole site, and all it's
resources.

To me, that's both anthropology, and good archaeology.






At 06:47 AM 8/24/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Lyle Browning wrote:
>
>>Here we disagree totally. I cannot see how any reasonably sentient
>>archaeologist would bid a project about which they knew nothing and blithely
>>assume they could handle it all. Phase I surveys to locate sites are one
>>thing. Phase II and III work which focuses on specific sites is quite
another.
>
>No.
>
>Phase I is the critical level, requiring the broadest knowledge and the
>deepest experience. Phase I survey identifies sites and assigns them a
>potential significance. To cite David Babson's example, a curious linear
>feature with cinders found in a Phase I will never be examined if Phase I
>investigator writes it off.
>
>Therefore, I firmly believe that Phase I should never be assigned to anyone
>but the most experienced investigator, who has a unique opportunity to set
>the direction of future work.
>
>Phase I is (or should be) the exciting stuff, where we explore local
>history, look at the anomalies, and survey the whole historical/cultural
>landscape. I much prefer to do a Phase I.
>
>As I have said before, an archaeologist is a generalist or he is nothing.
>
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