There is growing concern over the safety of ancient native Columbia River rock art because of housing developments, vandalism and theft. In the past archaeologists tried to keep the locations secret-now there’s a new effort to actually expose the art to the public as part of an educational campaign that encourages ownership. Producer: Sean Hutchinson
I have been hammering on this over at the NEARA bulletin board with the usual non-response and/or disagreement.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that this petroglyph defense involves doing away with secrecy and creating more public awareness.
Interesting video on the rock art of Oregon, and exposing sites to the public. I'll go along with this as long as there is also a concerted effort to educate the public about these sites through lectures, newspaper articles, TV etc. How about opening one of these sites as a test, just to see what happens?
ReplyDeleteThen there is the curious case of the MAS (Mass. Archaeological Soc.) which has a policy against publishing site locations. Recently they did publish a location and the site got vandalized by -presumably- a reader of the MAS Bulletin. Most upsetting. But a publication that suppresses what is needed to verify scientific statements may be considered as not a scientific publication.
ReplyDeleteNEARA seems quite content to keep its secrets, while making them available, to members, for a small fee.
Peter, was the site the MAS published looted by pot hunters?
ReplyDeleteIt was a dig published by Curt Hoffman. He writes about it in the intro to the fall edition of the Bulletin of the MAS.
ReplyDelete