During the Great Depression, 1929 to 1941, the federal government sponsored archaeological programs as one way of alleviating massive unemployment. Standardization of field methodology and the overall professionalism of archaeology were considerably advanced by these federally-funded relief programs (Dunnell 1986:28; Lyon 1982:25). For the most part, historians of archaeology have focused their attention on large-scale relief excavations in the Southeast. This paper examines a more modest chapter in the history of archaeology by focusing on comparatively smaller-scale relief excavations in Somerset County, Pennsylvania (Figure 1).
Published and largely unpublished records of the Somerset
County relief excavations are examined to reconstruct the field methodology
developed during the Somerset County relief excavations and employed by a
crew of largely untrained workers. Particular attention is placed on evaluating
the effectiveness of this field methodology and the quality of the data obtained.
Two case studies demonstrate that these excavations are not simply historical
curiosities, but produced substantive results that are useful in modern archaeological
interpretations.
First appeared in Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology 14:39-63.
Original copyright 1998. Reprinted with permission from Archaeological
Services.
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