- “Disturbed” Areas. Many times people believe a particular area has been so disturbed that there can’t possibly be any important cultural resources. With this in mind, they choose to minimize cultural resource efforts. In some of the highest profile cases, what appeared to be disturbed, was not, and some important resource was discovered during construction. A lot of these problems could have been prevented with a little pre-construction field work or historical analysis using old maps and aerial photographs.
- Expertise. Archaeologists working in an area (geographically and technically), where he or she has little or no expertise, has been a problem. While one might think that an archaeologist should never work in an area where he or she has no experience, the reality of today’s contract archaeology is that more and more archaeologists are working for large engineering firms that perform work all over the world. In these types of organizations, archaeological employees are often under pressure to perform work themselves to keep the money “in-house.” They are often pressured as well to do the minimum required. The Section 106 process provides some checks and balance with the SHPO, tribal, and interested party review, but it is far from a foolproof system. Ultimately, for the system to work, professional archaeologists must be accountable for meeting minimum standards, such as those developed by the Register of Professional Archaeologists. This is the baseline; from here archaeologists can – and should – address their client’s interests.
Problem Parties: We are All at Fault
In addition to looking for persistent themes, we looked at which groups have typically been causing the problems. Interestingly, it does not appear that any one group is consistently at fault. We all seem to be part of the problem. Maybe the archaeologist made a mistake, maybe the agency failed to consult, maybe the tribe did not submit comments, maybe the archaeological contractor low balled the bid. Sometimes it’s a comedy of errors among several of the parties.It certainly is not unusual to have problems given the nature of our business. We should expect the unexpected because we really can never know what lies beneath the surface. But we should not have disasters. Our methods should identify important cultural resources before work begins, but if they don’t, we should be competent enough to diffuse the situation as soon as problems appear and prevent the situation from escalating into a full fledged disaster.
A General Lack of Respect
The fact that we have had so many high cost project failures indicates to us a fundamental problem with our overall system of cultural resource protection. We propose that the problem is a general lack of respect. Not just a lack of respect for the resource, be they human remains, remnants of an ancient village, or ruins of a 1880s homestead, but a general lack of respect for the people who care about the resource as well.We’d like to see everyone involved with cultural resources raise their standards a notch and 1) make a better effort to reduce the risk of encountering important resources in their project, and 2) take serious action when inadvertent or unanticipated discoveries are made; deal with them honestly, openly and in a professional manner.
Creating a Code of Conduct
As archaeologists, we are often in a position to advise the other parties on the actions that should be taken prior to construction or after a discovery is made. We need to work harder to explain the costs and benefits of different options. We need to adhere to minimum standards, such as the codes of conduct and standards of research performance developed by the Register of Professional Archaeologists. Perhaps it would help if we customized these codes and standards for the Pacific Northwest, given our unique environmental and cultural setting.In any event, we invite others to comment on these thoughts and share their perspectives in the AWA newsletter. With a little effort, we should be able to make archaeological disasters a thing of the past, at least in the Pacific Northwest.
This article first appeared in the newsletter of the Association for Washington Archaeology, and is reprinted here with permission.
Darby Stapp and Julie Longencker have lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest since 1978. They can be reached at 278 Adair Dr., Richland, WA 99352, 509-627-2944, and dstapp@charter.net.
