Landscapers ― how to treat (small) archaeological finds?

[Heroique]

Believe me I have really struggled with these issues...

It’s a bit complicated...

I have never been so honored as to find artifacts, and I know if I did I would face temptation.

Yes, and what adds to the intellectual and emotional complications – today’s sophisticated archeological methods will look primitive to the next generation.

It will always be this way of course – today’s methods, revealing and responsible by today’s standards, will always, to some degree, prove to be unnecessarily destructive by tomorrow’s best archaeolgists.

I often come across writings by Fred Blackburn (photo below – a former BLM ranger out West) who in the 1970’s finally tired of artifacts in museums and storerooms w/ vague cataloging and lost proveniences and bad record keeping ... by today’s standards.

He developed the idea of the “Outdoor Museum,” a controversial idea that’s still around and always seems to attract influential supporters. Very simply stated – enjoy your discovery, leave it in situ, trust the next person will do the same. (It’s more complicated than this, but that’s the gist.) Blackburn’s idea, of course, is sufficient cause for archaeologists to shake their heads at the silliness – but it’s a silliness under which there is important wisdom to consider, if we think about future generations of both experts and laypeople.

It certainly provokes the question, where can we find the best balance?

[Kirk Gittings]

Craig Childs argues the same POV in his book. I'm reluctant to promote this idea. Remote sites I visited years ago that were covered with artifacts on the surface are now barren-the artifacts sitting in peoples sock drawer somewhere. I'd rather have it in a museum collection.

I know enough, having studied archeology my whole life, to have a sense of what artifacts might be significant. So I photograph, get a GPS location and report them. Beyond that I can't worry about it, but I do donate money to the Center for Desert Archeology and the Archeology Conservancy.

[Drew Wiley]

I agree with the necessity of salvage arch. if something like a highway is going thru, or
impending development. But otherwise, the lack of finesse of the folks involved is just one
more way to make better info inacessible in the future. I'm not claiming bad intentions, but
just a stupendous amt of naivette. Most of these guys are trained in the social sciences,
not hard science. Then there's the political correctness thing ... the artifacts get donated
to a native american museum, where they promptly get stolen for drug money, or the mafia
literally moves in and sells the stuff to overseas collectors. Seen it happen repeatedly. Or
you get one of those Kennewick Man scenarios where nobody wins. Just about the very worst thing you can do is plaster photos on a website with GPS or specific location data.
The vandals are sure to follow. Some of those folks are much better than professional
archaeologists about sniffing out sites, and do a lot of damage fast. Like Kirk, I hate to
see millennia of history compromised due to either good intentions or bad. Most of the stories we'll never know.

[Kirk Gittings]

Most of these guys are trained in the social sciences,
not hard science. Then there's the political correctness thing ... the artifacts get donated
to a native american museum, where they promptly get stolen for drug money, or the mafia
literally moves in and sells the stuff to overseas collectors. Seen it happen repeatedly.

My usual reply when you make blanket statements like these-do you know of any articles etc. to support these claims?

And out here you can't get a contract to do salvage archeology without a graduate in Anthro or Arch and extensive supervised excavation experience. I believe those are Federal regs. I know tons of these people and your description fits none of these people. 99% of them are archeologists with a bachelors or more often with a masters degree and extensive experience and very competent and ethical people. They usually can't afford to proceed with their education to a PHD for whatever reason (or taking a break) and aren't competitive in teaching for lack of a PHD.

[Drew Wiley]

I know some of the folks in charge, Kirk. Nice folks, but they don't have a clue. When I did
research, albeit some time back, I deliberately worked with geoscientists due to the backwardness of the arch. crowd around here. Today you still have something of a bifurcation in talent. Some famous folks which I personally interacted with have been involved in the university here, but their field was more precisely palaeanthropology. This
dovetailed well into the kind of work I specialized in. The salvage archs. were another story. I wouldn't even want them poking around serious sites. The stories I could tell.
I was decades ahead of most of these guys in technique, even when I was a kid. I was
probably the first person in the US who took lithics seriously. Now its getting routine. Most
people probably don't even know the name of the guy who initiated that field - he was
a Russian, Semenov. Ironically, it was the tech guys familiar with Upper Paleaolithic sites
in Europe and Africa who instantly recognized what I was up to. Hopefully the publicity
given to early dates on the Channel Islands etc will jump start a little more serious attitude
toward west coast work.

[Drew Wiley]

(Rambling on, Kirk)... I knew guys writing their phD thesis studying the backfill tailings of
"pothunters", and neither they or their mentors even recognized it. The salvage folks were
not different than the collectors - they bag the obvious stuff like points, put them in a museum to be never seen again, then throw every thing else away. But it's all that little stuff that if often the most important evidence, esp with lithics. Studying the "scraps" and
wear patterns on this or that is paramount. But state budget wise (what little is left of it)
most of the salvage attention is currently going to historical sites, like Calif missions and Gold Rush vintage sites. Fortunately, one of the great Pleistocene megafauna sites me and
my father knew about our whole lives and kept quiet about has gotten serious study rather
than vandalism, along with a dedicated museum.

[windij]

Some suggested reading concerning this issue.

http://www.saa.org/Portals/0/SAA/pub...4-1/SAA15.html

http://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/nhpa1966.htm

I've been in the Cultural Resource Management (CRM) aka "salvage archaeology" business for nearly 7 years now. I have a master of science degree in geomorphology with an emphases in geoarchaeology and I will be starting my PhD in the fall. In my seven years I've worked in nearly every state in the lower 48, mainly for the department of defense, various state transportation departments, the army corps of engineers, the BLM, the department of the interior, and various Native American tribes. For the last 3 years I've been working primarily in the southwest (mostly Arizona and New Mexico). I've been involved in several ARPA violation cases and believe me when I tell you that the destruction of the archaeological record and/or the removal of artifacts on public lands is taken very seriously. Taking of artifacts from public lands not only destroys the artifacts contextual integrity (which severely limits what we can learn about the prehistoric behaviors associated with the artifact) it is a violation of federal law.

In response to what some have said regarding the competence of salvage archaeologists.....Most of the people I've had the good fortune to work with on CRM projects are highly dedicated and ethical archaeologists who work for low pay and little recognition. They are highly educated people dedicated to their field of study. Yes archaeology is a so called "soft science" but over the last two decades there has been a serious shift towards the "hard sciences" in an attempt to answer increasingly sophisticated archaeological questions. As a geologist I could certainly make a lot more money working in the petroleum industry but archaeology is what I love. I can't imagine myself doing anything else....well perhaps a large format photographer but that goes without saying.

[Drew Wiley]

Wow. Nice to know there's someone with a geomorph bkgrnd on this forum. When I was into it, the whole field was outright blackballed - could only get a job analyzing oilfield cores, since the Army Corps and Beareau of Rec blacklisted anyone challenging their streamflow channelization models, which are now almost universally recognized as disastrous. Now my nephew makes a fine living in geomorph running his own geophysics co, doing pretty much what was heresy in my day, but obviously with a lot of computerized modeling. I'd use our fluvial meander formulas based on aggregate size to
locate elephant kill sites in ancient bogs. Forgot all the physics stuff itself, but it did work!

[windij]

So basically what I'm saying is if you find something out there note your location, take a photo (preferably with some kind of size reference such as a pencil or lens cap etc), and report it to the public/federal entity that manages the land you found it on. Obviously no one is going to know or investigate a random photographer who picks up a projectile point/pot sherd in the wilderness. People rob cultural resources on public lands all the time. It may seem trivial but after a dozen people have found the same site and collected one or two small artifacts it doesn't leave much for us to study. Thus, we (the collective we, modern humans) will never know the human story associated with that site. So please look at it, photograph it, appreciate it, but then just walk away.

[Heroique]

Taking of artifacts from public lands not only destroys the artifacts contextual integrity (which severely limits what we can learn about the prehistoric behaviors associated with the artifact) it is a violation of federal law. ...So please look at it, photograph it, appreciate it, but then just walk away.

Your thoughtful remarks offer a healthy dose of legal sense, and serve the vital interests of sophisticated archaeologists – but what about stumbling upon & picking-up small artifacts, just for a moment?

I mean this not so much as a legal-scientific question, but as a moral-educational one.

That is, at what point does good, legal behavior begin prohibiting the layperson’s sense of magic & deeper appreciation of a vanished culture?

Or conversely, when does technically illegal behavior promote important cultural attitudes?