At 8:06 AM 8/19/99, Diane Dismukes wrote:

>I am a specialist myself, but I never do my analysis, or write my report
>without linking my results to human behavior. Industrial sites did not
>create themselves and did not operate without human intervention.

Specialization is good, even necessary, but we must constantly guard
against allowing our own specialties to temper our objectivity.  Whatever
our interest or specialization, we are obliged to give absolutely equal
weight to every specialist study or interest that might be involved in
whatever we are doing.

Archaeologists must be generalists or they are nothing.

Consider this: An archaeological organization primarily interested in
prehistoric sites was assigned the task of surveying a highway right-of-way
that crossed  a National Register railroad right-of-way, at the location
where wooden crossties were first introduced into the United States. This
was one of the premier events in the history of railroad building, with a
huge potential for providing important historical information. Its
technological significance was spelled out clearly in the National Register
nomination.

Section 106 was not invoked, and the SHPO concurred in destroying the
resource without study. All the archaeologists involved were prehistorians,
and they simply do not care about industrial sites, even if they happen to
be sites of international significance.

So what good is a National Register if it is administered with cavalier
disregard for any significance outside the excavator's hobbyhorse, or the
bias of the SHPO reviewer?

This site was dismissed with a comment that it was nothing but a place
where railroad tracks were laid.

In short, the site contained no dead Indians, and that particular
investigator didn't care about railroad technology.  To me, this was a
gross miscarriage of professional responsibility. I see the same sort of
narrow interpretation happening over and over, with increasing frequency.
This is a disturbing trend.