Governors Island Redux

Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 13:10:49 EST

Sender: Archaeology List

Subject: Re: [Story taken from todays news stories.]

I thank you for the response. The questions revolve around things that are both private and public in the current political climate as you observe. The interesting points have actually resulted in progress toward the recognition of off-reservation and reservation based native Americans in the particular case I was indirectly referring to, at least according to the press I read after (I am not affiliated with any group or cause, though a former program director of an archaeological society).

My criticism, and I agree about collectors, however, is not specific. In my experience, sites have been taken away, written up by those not even on site, without consultation with those that excavated it, and the experts find the more important materials after the archaeologists are done. It's not collectors in my experience, but perhaps and in fact people who know what they're looking for so to speak. It makes me very red, on many not just a few occasions, to report here that it happens and probably will go on happening. Not the "wayward" collector wandering over the archaeological landscape, nor the local activist who wants the development that obstructs perceived serenity and contemplation from Nature, no, real experts who go on to reconstruct bateaux at Mystic Seaport (terrible fire in town there yesterday, not suspicious) naval history that would have otherwise been overlooked by archaeologists. This reflects poorly on the field, specifically when much ecological data can be ascertained with imagination and training from just about any site in my opinion, the lack thereof is mute testimony to the inroads archaeology was supposed to make for other sciences.

If this seems caustic, it is not its intent. I have watched collections go out the door over money and politics some only to be abandoned in the process. That is why some are proposing a permanent space for collections be established on Governors Island, here in NYC as a permanent repository for collected materials, to enable future, as yet unknown uses for collected material and data that researchers may need for perhaps legal and scientific evidence.

See: Bateaux and 'Battoe Men': An American Colonial Response to the Problem of Logistics in Mountain Warfare