E.P. Grondine and list,
I certainly agree. Researchers often relegate strata
unrelated temporally to a target component to the waste-heap of total
irrelevance, often due to a progressively (regressively) narrowed perspective
and/or lack of time/funds (weather? what a joke! temporary structures such as
canopies can be built. This all should have been anticipated in that part of
the world). I believe no irreversible, destructive excavation work (as if there
is any other) should be undertaken without a research design accounting for all
site formation processes, and not at all if an artifact-fetish motivates
attitudes. Charcoal and other organics (if recovered at all) was discarded
frequently during excavation before the advent of C14 dating, and lithic
debitage, a highly informative artifact class, was largely ignored until the
'70s. Thermally-affected rocks are usually only counted, weighed, and discarded
in contemporary excavations. Invasive field archaeology is only maximally
informative as a highly systematic recordation of a site that values
tedious redundancy - statistical redundancy - and is not biased by a "search"
or "discovery" of a "people," "culture," or other construct bound to one of
many competing theories or in verifying (as opposed to falsifying - in the
Popperian sense) a selected hypothesis. Archaeology is not ethnography.
Populations utilizing the Newport Tower may have buried objects to extreme
depth, overlooked because of age (not to mention also that chemical pedology is
specifically and uniquely contingent on the presence of metals or organic
remains not otherwise associated with each other - affecting precipitation in a
predictable manner). We must anticipate revolutions in analytical field
methods, which is to anticipate better analytical technologies as well as a
more holistic awareness of physical conditions commanding the collection of
data-sets often ignored in "ordinary" contexts. Very large
hydrologic-geomorphological data-sets will be necessary to the the future of
geoarchaeological research of Acheulian European sites, for example; most sites
like this have been redeposited by Pleistocene alluvial process, but will be
interpreted with much greater certainty as technology permitting fast, accurate
mass data acquisition and physical analysis becomes inexpensive.
If my reading is correct, some work at Newport Tower sounds like bad CRM
archaeology, necessarily controlled by and preocuppied with issues like
'significance,' with time, money, and impetus always too limited. Better
attention to chemical precipitates, if iron residues can be morphologically
detected physically as discrete anomalies, may reveal traces of iron artifacts
(perhaps only oxidizing into ostensive oblivion).
It's all too expensive.
Too bad we can't re-excavate.
... and students ... . I know of a student who, during the excavation of a
California Archaic (Millingstone Horizon - La Jolla [San Marcos]), troweled
right through a rare hearth feature in their 1x1m unit, and simply did not
record or otherwise mention it. A sense of shame and regret motivated this
action (rather a lack of action) once it was recognized that ANY damage had
been done. Data still could have been collected from some in situ portion of
the hearth.
"Error" or "inexperience" of a student led to the inadvertent and auspicious
discovery of an important object irrelevant to historical reconstruction.
Carelessness due to inexperience and a lack of accountability led to incomplete
chronostratigraphic calibration somewhere else.
-Thaddeus Besedin
(a student of geoarchaeology - pardon the false pedantry)
"E.P. Grondine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi all -
"They were not paying attention to that level"
This gets my blood pressure up. While from what I
read, the excavators were constrained by time and
weather, given the uniqueness of the site, they should
have been "paying attention".
good hunting,
Ed
Man and Impact in the Americas
--- Charlie Devine wrote:
> Mark wrote:
>
> >Good work there, well done taking the
> >time to go see the site.......Do you know
> >if they do any kinds of tests other then
> >a visual like a streak test, magnet test,
> >etc., etc.?
>
> Hello Mark,
>
> Well, I'm only 30 minutes from the site, so no big
> deal getting there.
> Besides, the Newport Tower has been called the "most
> enigmatic structure
> in North America", so visiting the first dig allowed
> there in 60 years
> was a must for me, since I've long been interested
> in the mystery of
> it's origin. Everyone involved wanted to see a
> "Viking sword" emerge
> from the ground, but that never happened. As for
> the mystery stone, it
> was actually found by accident when one of the
> students working there
> ran a magnet through dirt taken from a 2000-3000 BP
> level. They were
> not screening or paying attention to that level, as
> it long predates the
> tower, but the student didn't realize it and used a
> magnet in a search
> for metal artifacts, and up popped the stone.
> I was certainly disappointed that I was unable to
> examine it. On the
> other hand, that probably spared me the task of
> being the one to tell
> them "that's no meteorite." I didn't want to find
> myself in that
> position, since by then the stone was their most
> exciting find. Many
> people from this list had written them, and at least
> one listmember
> suggested a monetary value for the stone!! So now
> the people at ASU can
> make the call.
>
> Best wishes,
> Charlie
>
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