In a message dated 10/20/99 2:59:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< If you wish to discuss the political ramifications of the Panama Canal
 transfer, please do so off the list. Histarch is for the discussion on
 historical archaeology and not current events.
 Anita Cohen-Williams
 Internet Trainer and Consultant
 Listowner of HISTARCH, SUB-ARCH, SPANBORD >>

Since I started this question about the HABS/HAER recording of the Panama
Canal Zone I wish to protest this objection, though the list owner is the
list owner. Let me play anthopologist/historical archaeologist for a moment
since I only have a BA and two years of graduate work back in 1978-80.

1) My first impressions with archaeologists is that they secretly fear the
ordnance they find, and they do find it on Federal properties or former
Federal installations.

2) There is no training in what to do in these circumstances and the
field-tech is not an expendable commodity. If the field director says
anything, he's as ignorant as the tech about the situation I have found.

3) Ordnance has been exploding around the West Point Academy during fires
started by lightning this July 1999. I have worked in areas, without
foreknowledge of the risks involved, that were or should have been considered
just as dangerous and each of these examples has stories associated with them
I will not drag out here in public. Fort Drum, NY; Gateway National Seashore,
NY; Fort McHenry National Shrine, MD; The Historic West Point Foundry, Cold
Spring, NY; The areas near Camp Smith and Iona Island, in the vicinity of
Bear Mountain Park, NY. Left behind "stuff" along the Saint Lawrence Seaway
by troops on some sort of maneuver. Officers relating that "powder blue" is
no longer the color of "duds" but high explosive rounds. Let's not forget one
of the most important Paleolithic sites, Debert, was found on a firing range
in Nova Scotia. I consider the archaeological establishment just as guilty as
the lead agency, when I can pick up an American Heritage history book that
knows more about a site than the researchers.

4) I have worked in HAZMAT sites, where I think, then, the "archaeologists"
were more prepared to evaluate the hazards than the experts! Imagine showing
up where the lead agency, hands you a contour map of hand held measurements
from a radium contaminated site. Yet this is considered the "science" of
remediation. One thing I've found is that the people not involved with the
archaeology always have at least a layer more of protection away from the
contaminant, i.e. equipment such as a backhoe, etc., whereas the
archaeologists are "hands-on" kind of labor, the lowest paid in the strata of
remediation making a lot of health and safety plans for the "Social Praxis"
and not those closest to who knows what because it obviously, from the
previous argument, not known.

5) What really burns me on these sites is that an absolute "chain of title"
is not attempted, and  historical reports filter through the local Museum,
people in town, or old newspapers and photos i.e., of a fire requiring
hundreds of firefighters for 24 hours, "chlorine?", craters in old aerial
photos in an adjacent National Audubon area, weak logic about the movement of
contaminants around the site, "discoveries" of varying levels during the work.

So what I was asking was really not about the Canal directly but as part of
the historical record keeping that involves what has been my experience. "How
many times must the cannonballs fly?" asked Bob Dylan (Zimmerman) at the West
Point Foundry, over 1 million were made I learned much later.

George J. Myers, Jr.