Allow me to ride my personal hobby horse about farmstead sites, even those
from "gasp" the 20th century.
We do, at present, "Have Thousands of These,"as the article in HA a few
years ago stated. But, unless you wish to argue complete cultural
similarity between the family farmer of 1900 and the corporate farmer of
2000 (both slippery enough in their definitions), we are seeing, with
farmsteads, the material remains of a way of life that is as extinct as
that of the Mississippians at Cahokia, albeit a bit more recent. So, we
shall go from thousands, to hundreds, to dozens, to none, in the classic,
dwindling curve of any archaeological resource. A century from now, even
the DOT will not be able to write off that early 20th century site.
At 11:00 AM 6/25/99 -0400, you wrote:
> I'm afraid I have to incline toward Adrian's statement about not all
> sites being equally important. In fact, I ranted in Historical
> Archaeology a few years ago about how we have to be very careful about
> arguing significance, particularly with sites of the recent historic
> past, else we may be in danger of undermining support for spending tax
> dollars on cultural resource management. As the late John Cotter once
> said to me, "Enough hot air can elevate any site to the level of
> significance," but that doesn't mean we should inflate the balloon.
>
> On the other hand, we must be equally careful not to be quickly
> dismissive of research areas outside our immediate areas of interest.
> I recall that while doing contract archaeology in Illinois the
> archaeologist with the Department of Transportation wanted to know if
> I would be interested in doing a particular project on a very late
> 19th-century homestead. When I didn't exactly jump at the
> opportunity, he allowed that they would simply write it off. I said,
> "Wait a minute. I'm not so interested in Cahokia Mounds, either, are
> you going to bulldoze that, too?" My point, of course, was that the
> site in question might indeed produce useful data, and was probably
> worth testing, but I was not sure that I was the researcher best
> qualified to make that assessment. By the same token, I haven't a
> clear idea what makes one industrial site better than an other to
> investigate, but by this time I should hope that someone does.
>
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>
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