Should artifact collectors be encouraged to report their discoveries?
Recently, amateur archaeologist Tony Baker has teamed up with the Paleoindian Database of the Americas to encourage artifact collectors to report information about their Paleoindian points for scientific research. In a piece on his website called Dear Arrowhead Hunter, Tony talks about the project in some detail.
The Archaeological Past
There's a rarely recalled fact in the history of archaeological science: in the late 19th century, most of the practicing archaeologists in the world were amateurs. They were doctors and farmers and German professors, well-educated people who were interested in the natural and cultural world and in their spare time explored their neighborhoods and found--and sometimes excavated--archaeological sites in their areas.
These regular amateur archaeologists carefully recorded their discoveries and wrote scholarly articles for such scholarly publications as the American Naturalist and the American Antiquarian; the annual reports of the Smithsonian Institution regularly accepted contributions from amateurs. Quite simply, professional archaeologists were then quite few and far between. And so, much of the early archaeological research of the North American continent is owed to the imput of such persons.
Collectors vs. Professionals
But these days--not so much. Although there are a few strong and interested amateur archaeologists, it's really difficult for anybody outside the profession to keep up with the science any more, and scientific excavation is far more precise than it was 150 years ago or more. And, there is a real chasm between the casual artifact collecting community and professional archaeologists, based on suspicion of one another's motives. Some archaeologists feel the collecting community are destroying archaeological sites; some of the collecting community feel that archaeologists have no right to tell them what they can do on private property.
Both of those suspicions are true. You'd think that would be an impasse. But, the information that a collector could bring to the archaeological record is valuable; all it takes is teaching the collector community to collect that additional information.
Collaboration Initiatives
The oldest established initiative bringing the collector to the archaeological table is the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a voluntary scheme to record archaeological objects found by members of the public in England and Wales, and based at the British Museum. The United States has been slow to follow up, but amateur archaeologist Tony Baker began working with the Paleoindian Database of the Americas, to bring in collector information about Paleoindian points.
Personally, I think this is a very hopeful sign for the future. You may feel differently!
