Charlie Ewan raises a good (and thorny) point. Heck, here in
Virginia some of our more august silverbacks keep suggesting we have
wasted enough time on the *18th* century and should only worry about
17th-c sites, preferably EARLY 17th...
 
Obviously that's a bit extreme. The problems raised by the myriads of
turn-of-the-20th c. sites, especially back here in the East, is very
similar to the problems that have plagued managers for years
concerning tens of thousands of "upland lithics scatters" and other
very common site types. A very great many of these get "written off"
year after year (and, I believe, rightly so), but then some hot-dog
young grad students come along, pleading that these sites are of
immense value. In most cases, they simply are not, but sometimes an
especially inventive person says some especially creative things
about such sites, and we all have to stop and wonder what we're
losing.
 
With the late 190th-early 20th c farmsteads, etc., I think we have a
similar problem. Clearly, however, it is much easier to say
interesting stuff about these because we can put names on occupants,
and often we can combine a lot of material data and documentary data
to tell some really good stories. Does this mean they should all be
studied?  Or even a large percentage? Absolutely not. I suspect each
manager of our resources will have to make her/his own case-by-case
judgements.  Let's at least be grateful that the chances of
developers or erosion wiping out or seriously denting the population
of such sites in the near future are slim, indeed. We
back-Easterners need to remember, too, that there are large portions
of the country where MOST of the historical archaeology is from
these periods. And, after all, our colleagues need comparative data
from the "old country."
 
Dan Mouer