Michael Nassaney writes: "...some folks still believe that we can know just about everything we need to about the late 19th -early 20th century from documents." It has taken us quite a while to win that battle here in Va (especially when there are sooo many prehistoric and colonial sites to worry about), but I think the strongest argument was (and probably always is) that archaeology is not history, and archaeology asks and answers questions which may be of no interest whatsoever to historians, or to the scribes who wrote historic records. On the other hand, archeologists defeat their purpose (and come off pretty ditzy) when they insist that ALL such sites have the same preservation/research value as earlier (and rarer, and more poorly documented) sites. We won't win many converts singing that tune (which I think was the tenor of Charlie Ewan's original post on this subject some months back. It is encumbant on the archaeologist to have a clear idea what s/he might be able to do with such sites, and then to make god strong arguments that archaeology is the best way to do it. Once a few really interesting studies are done in an area, resistance to "late sites archaeology" tends to fade away. Given the potential for bringing in personal and family histories, informant interviews, and elevating the archaeology of the everyday past of near memory, I think that most communities recognize the value of such projects. But they need to be done with the sensitivity of the ethnographic/ethnohistoric research that they are. If all we're going to do is a study of bottle embossing, or create a tin can chronology, I doubt we'll find much support anywhere for our efforts. Dan Mouer