Category: National Environmental Policy Act

Archaeology is a destructive science. Generally there are no exciting explosions, or catastrophic collapses when undertaking an excavation, but all the same, once a site or portion of a site is excavated it is gone for good. Every good archaeologist is trained to take this fact into account when doing archaeological work. We sketch, note, measure, photograph, and generally record every minute detail of an excavation knowing that we are destroying the very thing we are interested in understanding. This is why there is more than a little truth in the old adage that for every day spent in the field, the archaeologist spends at least as much time, and often more, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting on the information that has been collected. Continue reading