Dear listserv; (Apologies for cross-posting)

I would like to thank everyone who recently responded to my survey
questions.  Several people mentioned that they would be interested in
the  paper once it was completed.  However, with the recent virus that
is "zipping" around, I hesitate to send an attachment to anyone.  If
anyone wishes a copy of the paper, I will gladly send it to you either
by snail mail or e-mail, whichever you prefer.

Below is a synopsis of the paper:

I intentionally called the survey unscientific for several reasons,
a) the questions asked for subjective responses, not objective ones.  I
was looking for feelings and ideas, not numbers; Several of the
questions asked for a yes or no response, but I was also hoping for
explanations, which most of you provided.
b) I don't think that feelings can be quantified or categorized as in
the usual survey format of 1 to 10, or certainly, doubtful, etc;
c) I posted the survey on two Internet listservs which, although having
a wider audience than I know personally, is still a biased sample of the
universe of archaeologists.

I received 23 responses, from five countries.  I truly did not think of
the questions as being "Americanized" so I'm thankful for the responses
that did come from England, Australia, Canada and Brazil.  I also
received responses from prehistoric as well as historic archaeologists.

Although the purpose of the survey and paper was to determine how
compatible theory and methods were, I was also doing it out of personal
curiosity. I mention in the paper some mental biases that I had before
starting the paper, which were certainly shot down by the responses.
One of these mental biases was the belief that
post-processualism/cognitivism doesn't work in the field.  However, I'm
happy to report that several responses included methods (or approaches)
they used based on these theories.

The end result of the survey is that theory, in most cases, drives the
questions asked and the methods used.  The most obvious exception to
this is CRM work, which is driven by identification and description
almost entirely.  Most archaeologists felt that although fieldwork
refined or modified their theoretical viewpoint, it did not change
entirely.

In the interests of brevity, this was only some of the highlights of the
paper.  My thanks again to those who participated and I will gladly
supply more information to those who make requests.

Donna L. Stubbs
Masters Student, Univ of Minn
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