Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T20:14:31.557Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Conflict of Values in American Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Thomas F. King
Thomas F. King*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As contract salvage programs have come to support more and more archaeological fieldwork and analysis, and as archaeologists have become increasingly concerned with the relevance of their sub-discipline to the larger explanatory goals of anthropology, a strategic conflict has arisen that threatens to severely limit the potential of American archaeology for long-range explanatory research. It is contended that this conflict has arisen because salvage-support agencies have been led to organize their contract procedures along lines amenable to inductive, laissez-faire research. These procedures have become canonized while archaeology has begun to drift toward deductive, interdisciplinary team methods. Proposed salvage programs in the North Coast Ranges of California are used to illustrate the self-defeating nature of present procedures, and reorganization is suggested to permit increased theoretical input and the integration of salvage operations into large-scale regional research programs.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 255 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, Eric 1967 Kaweah River archaeology: thoughts toward a public policy. Unpublished ms, National Park Service, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Binford, L. R. 1962 Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28:217–225.Google Scholar
Binford, L. R. 1968 Archeological perspectives. In New perspectives in archeology, edited by S. R. Binford and L. R. Binford, pp. 5–32. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar
Brown, James 1966 Dimensions of status in the burials at Spiro. Paper presented at the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Caldwell, J. R. 1958 The new American archaeology. Science 129:303–307.Google Scholar
Caws, Peter 1969 The structure of discovery. Science 166:1375–1380.Google Scholar
Edwards, R. L. 1969 Salvage anthropology: an informational report on the anthropological opposition to the “High” Dos Rios Dam. Unpublished ms, Society for California Archaeology, Daly City.Google Scholar
Edwards, R. L., Hegta, R., Anderson, E. N. Jr., Schenk, R. E., King, T. F., Kemnitzer, L., Molohon, K. T., and McQanahan, S. R. 1969 Salvage anthropology: Round Valley case study. Symposium presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for California Archaeology and the Southwestern Anthropological Association, Las Vegas.Google Scholar
Fried, M. H. 1960 On the evolution of social stratification and the state. In Culture in history, essays in honor of Paul Radin, edited by S. Diamond, pp. 713–731. Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Fritz, John M., and Plog, Fred T. 1970 The nature of archaeological explanation. American Antiquity 35:405–412.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl 1966 Philosophy of natural science. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.Google Scholar
Hill, J. N. 1969 A methodological debate in archaeology. Paper presented to a graduate seminar in anthropology, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Jennings, J. D. 1963 Administration of contract emergency archaeological programs. American Antiquity 28:282–285.Google Scholar
Service, E. R. 1962 Primitive social organization. Random House, New York.Google Scholar
Stephenson, R. L. 1963 Administrative problems of the river basin surveys. American Antiquity 28:277–281.Google Scholar
Struever, Stuart 1968 Problems, methods, and organization: A disparity in the growth of archeology. In Anthropological archeology in the Americas, edited by B. J. Meggers, pp. 131–151. Anthropological Society of Washington.Google Scholar
Swartz, B. K. 1967 A logical sequence of archaeological objectives. American Antiquity 32:487–496.Google Scholar
Winters, H. D. 1968 Value systems and trade cycles of the Late Archaic in the Midwest. In New perspectives in archeology, edited by S. R. Binford and L. R. Binford, pp. 175–221. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar