You read it in the news every so often and if you're like me, you cringe. Some construction work in the world is halted because they discovered archaeological remains—usually human burials—ripping into the archaeological deposits with construction equipment.
In recent dreadful experiences such as the African Burial Ground in New York City, lawsuits followed accusations, bad press and construction delays and a lot of really angry people. In a new book from Left Coast Press called Avoiding Archaeological Disasters: A Risk Management Approach, Darby C. Stapp and Julia G. Longenecker use their expertise and experience to provide an outline for helping construction project managers develop a plan to avoid such disasters.
You can't always avoid finding archaeological sites—archaeologists are not psychic and you never know until you dig what's under the surface. But you can be prepared for the potential, and have a plan on what to do when such an occurrence happens. That's what Avoiding Archaeological Disasters is all about.
The book would be extremely useful to project managers to give them the background they need to avoid such disasters, and it might also be useful to archaeologists and other cultural resource managers to help project managers navigate the rocky shoals of heritage management.
- Read the Review
- Avoiding Archaeological Disasters, Compare Prices via Price Grabber
- Avoiding Archaeological Disasters, Left Coast Press
- Preventing Archaeological Disasters an article by Stapp and Longenecker written for About.com in 2005
Comments
The best disastere I had happened about 25 years ago. Someone used a backhoe to shut off the main to a house that was on top of and archaeological site. (THe St Mungo Site on the Fraser River in BC. They, of course, unearthed a burial.
The government officers in charge sent me out to mitigate. This was my last day of work and I was leaving the government to attend grad school.
When I arrived, the burial was packed away in burlap sacks by some boy scouts, and there was a team of archaeologists drawing a plane table map of the area.
The team and i agreed they fould complete the map, and I would take the remains home and the Provincial Museum people would take custody. I put the remains in plastic bavs (as no self-respecting archaeologist would use potatoe sacks. As I did so I noticed there wer not only human remains, but also deer, elk, and fish (as this was a midden.)
I put the remains in the trumnk of my car
Officials never showed up. In the ensuing months, I had several parking tickets, and one routine check by the police who wondered what was in all those plastic bags. I also had three car fires.
I moved the remains from the trunk to one of my closets. My girlfriend of the time spotted them and our relationship ended.
I came to realize that the remains had something to do with my string of disasters. Another archaeologist and I contacted the Musqueum and organized a community burial. During the ceremony, I noticed two bald eagles on top of a tall fir tree. as the remains were lowered into the grave, they bowed their heads and flew off.