Huh?


At 06:18 PM 10/20/99 -0400, you wrote:
>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.
>