The Archaeologist and the Crew

Abstract

In this collection of humanistic memoirs, I am the junior contributor, and therefore my archaeological memoirs extend no further into the past than the mid-1950s. As I conjure those memories from the past, I find the richest moments focus on my crews who helped me do “my thing” of data collecting and question-asking on historic sites. I want to share some of those memories with you. First, however, I want to look at some of the reasons why I became an archaeologist searching for an understanding of the different ways people have lived. That takes me to my childhood in the mid-1930s. In this chapter I also want to share some of those memories as background for the time when I would become an archaeologist concerned with the way people lived in the past. My search for clues to the past has involved sites once occupied by Native Americans, Englishmen, Spaniards, and Frenchmen.

Archaeologists dealing with data from historic sites must synthesize beyond the ruin-specific level if they are to address themselves to questions involving past cultural systems instead of merely past cultural ruins. Stanley South