Mining Data, Protecting Historic Landscapes, and Understanding the Past

Summary

Forty years ago Bill Lipe dared archaeologists to fundamentally change their views about archaeological practice. We were like miners, exploiting a non-renewable resource. If we were to have a future we would need to practice conservation as well as salvage, and education as well as preservation. Lipe published his 1974 Kiva article just as CRM and modern government archaeology were coming into being. Today, we live in a fundamentally different archaeological culture: there are four times as many CRM and government archaeologists as there are professors teaching archaeology; SHPOs are annually making more than 100,000 determinations of National Register eligibility, and agencies treat many of these sites as if they were listed; in the Southwest alone there are more than 50 national parks or monuments highlighting archaeological resources. Increasingly our challenge is how to “mine” and take advantage of the sheer quantity of archaeological observations produced each year. How do we sift through all the site forms and dots on maps to do better archaeology, plan for the future, and support great research? Following in Lipe’s footsteps, I propose a model of archaeological practice that challenges academic, government, and CRM archaeology to chart a common course.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Realities on the Ground: Pasts, Presents, and Futures of the National Historic Preservation Act

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