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. 
 

There are lots of great examples. Anyone who knows me can guess my first example is using fine mesh (1/8-inch screen) for all aspects of archaeology. This scam practice has angered me for some time. Another is the increasing use of the quarter test unit (QTU, sondage, 50x50, etc.) as the primary site evaluation excavation unit. The QTU is an incredibly useless excavation unit for the vast majority of sites examined during CRM (unless your goal is to increase profit and not find anything, then its awesome!), but since its square, it screams archaeology to non-archaeologists. We must be good archaeologists, we dug square holes!! These practices promote the appearance of rigor, without actually being rigorous.

But I have come across an interesting example of Archaeology Theater recently. It’s the increasing (and increasingly mandated) scam of putting photographs of debitage on site forms. These images consist almost universally of a photograph of debitage scattered in the dirt or spread out on the back of a note book.  Here is an example. 

 

I recently did a project where I had to review several hundred precontact site forms for an area. The sites were all surface scatters recorded in the last decade. Nearly every single siteform had some variation of the photograph above. What was truly amazing about this project was that less than half of the projectile points found at these sites were typed or described (beyond “point”) in the field and only about a third were photographed. None were drawn. The point type was not definable for about half of the point photographs because the picture was so poor. But every single siteform had a photograph (and usually multiple photographs) of debitage on a notebook, on the ground or on a scale, but almost none of these forms illustrated the points. 

So, here is my view. Rarely are photographs of debitage useful on a siteform. The truth is that photographs of any tools (expect projectile points) on siteforms is almost never useful. Its phony documentation. Maybe here and there these images can be used. But I think its safe to say that in more than 99 percent of cases it has no value. Projectile point illustrations are useful. Points should be typed, photographed and drawn to scale.

One might say “why not put photographs of debitage on the siteform? It may be useful sometime? Also it’s not hurting anything.” 

This is wrong.

First, it makes the siteforms longer. Sure, in some cases this does not matter, but for those of us who have had to wade through 40 page site forms with no usable information, it’s a big deal. Second, it teaches crew supervisors and field crews to be stupid. Thinking about what you are doing and why becomes less important than conforming to some vague and poorly understood notion of what archaeology looks like. Third, archaeology is a zero sum game. When you focus energy on useless information, you have to take energy from important information. When you focus on phony documentation you end up missing real information. Fourth, it’s a scam. This is because it costs money to fill out a siteform in the field, check and transfer the information at the office and submit the form. It costs money to think about how you want to record surface data and to train your crews to do it properly. It costs money to take the time to draw and take a good photograph of a point. It takes time to create a system to systematically and quantitatively tabulate tool types present at a site. It take much less time to snap a picture of debitage on a notebook and just note there are choppers, points and used flakes at the site.   

We would be much better off taking some time to think about how we can standardize quantitative information from sites in the field than fixating on useless photographs of debitage.