Archeology Theater

I have been thinking quite a bit lately how much of what goes on in CRM is really just Archaeology Theater. Archaeology Theater is creating and maintaining the pretense of doing archaeology, but not really doing archaeology. Basically, Archaeology Theater is what non-archaeologists think archaeology looks like. It's most prevalent with field methods (excavation and recording), but is also manifest in the myths, memes and shibboleths common in CRM. Archaeology Theater is actively harmful to doing good archaeology. Probably the worst thing about Archaeology Theater is that now archaeologists are convincing themselves that these practices constitute good archaeology. 
 

The Archaeology of The Dalles Area: Precontact Settlement and Subsistence

to be published somewhere soon...

The Archaeology of The Dalles Area: Precontact Settlement and Subsistence
by Paul S. Solimano and Daniel M. Gilmour

Introduction

The stretch of the Columbia River around The Dalles, Oregon, holds a special position in Pacific Northwest anthropology. Before twentieth century hydropower development, the Columbia River was recognized as one of the greatest salmon-producing rivers in the world (Butler and O’Connor 2004; Northwest Power Planning Council 2000), with the ten mile stretch between The Dalles and the mouth of the Deschutes River a foremost North American precontact Native fishery. (Butler and O’Connor 2004; Netboy 1980) (Figure 1). Ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts detail large, dense populations, villages, and complex seasonal movements (DeSmet 1978; Moulton 1991; Stern 1998; Wilkes 1844). Records show the area was the center of an extensive travel and trade network connecting people from as far away as the Pacific coast, Canada, California, and the Bitterroot Mountains (Anastasio 1972; Hayden and Schulting 1997; Stern 1998). Intensive fishing with complex systems of rights and access is also documented (Boyd 1996; French 1961; French and French 1998; Spier and Sapir 1930). Ninety years of archaeological work, albeit with varying degrees of professionalism, has revealed numerous large, dense sites with deposits spanning the Holocene and containing some of the most extraordinary precontact material culture known on the Columbia Plateau (Minor 1988a, 1988b). 

As a result, Northwest archaeologists have generally viewed The Dalles area as having some of the most complex cultural systems on the Plateau during the precontact period (Ames et al. 1998; Butler 1993; Hayden and Schulting 1997; Minor 1988b, 1988c, 2012). Minor (1988c:76) succinctly expresses the common view among archaeologists when he states:  

“If the assumption is accepted that elaboration in material culture in the form of wealth items, mortuary goods, and portable and rock art are intimately associated with social organization and ideological systems, then the level of cultural complexity in the Dalles-Deschutes area was higher than in any other area of the Columbia Plateau in prehistoric times, perhaps rivaling the classic cultures of the Northwest Coast.”

Despite this special place in the region and a large number of recorded sites, numerous and sometimes vast excavations and staggering numbers of collected artifacts, our understanding of precontact settlement and subsistence for The Dalles area remains nearly non-existent.