INTRODUCTION

In the abstract, it would seem easy to find common ground among a group of practitioners whose intellectual focus is the archaeology of the last five hundred years. Whether your interest is industry, or colonialism or the transformation of a medieval, feudal world into something distinctly post-medieval and modern, there is no denying that these events are part of a larger historical tapestry. Yet as the three days of the Crossing Paths or Sharing Tracks? conference and this subsequent volume have shown, diff erences of tradition, educational background and point of entry have produced a somewhat fractured and eclectic intellectual landscape that makes the navigation of this complex period all the more challenging. Some of these diff erences are intellectual and reflect contrasting interests. Some are very practical, and here I am talking about diff erences in funding and practice. In the United States, the division between university-based archaeologists and those employed primarily in cultural resource management (CRM) has narrowed significantly over the past twenty years due in large measure to a combination of funding realities and the growing interest in heritage and memory as topics of theoretical significance. Most archaeology carried out in the United States is CRM-based research, but the character of the work has changed. Much of the work remains compliance-related, that is, normally triggered by commercial development or large federally or state-funded projects. There has also been an expansion of heritage-based research that is linked to tourism, development in national parks, or research funded by Tribal Nations who want to insure that their own development does not destroy their own archaeological legacies.