I have been concerned about this type of thing for many years.  My concerns are more in the line with our own research that has been completed.  We file our reports with the Information Center (sometimes) and then never hear anything further.  I have completed reports for my employers that I was never even able to get a copy for myself, given the sensitivity of the project and the politics that ensued...

Many issues have come up.

That is what I like about the Louisiana Division of Archaeology. Two copies of a final report are required: one copy goes in the curated box that has the field records and  accompanying artifacts (if any) and the other (with state report number) goes in the division's library for all researchers to pull and copy. Additionally, if you print extra copies of your report, you can leave them on the "freebee" shelf for others to take home. Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and, I think, Florida has similar setups.

I've worked on some sensitive projects, but none that I would consider several years afterward as "eyes only". However, with the Louisiana SHPO, which I primarily deal with now, you have to be approved to access the site files and reports.

I am hopeful but I also have my doubts that it may never change. I say this because material elements and physical elements left behind do not or may not be equal in comparison to today's actual elemental compounds. For example, carbon dating is based on the decay of material of alpha and beta particles, correct? However, we do not know what the original carbon was, or what the off gassing materials did to change or preserve compounds. We can look at layers of earth, trapped pockets of air in the ice, etc. but there is an evolution that we may not be able to fully accurately date.

Elements may stay the same but we know very well that there are many variegating combinations of materials such as in metals. There could have been many other variables that we have not separated in earth materials accurately. I believe that what they have found thus far is very helpful and closest to dating but we cannot assume that it is the same and has been the same and will always be the same. Too many variables that may possibly be ignored. All we can do is try and keep pressing forward, researching and reresearching until we know for sure.

Chloe,

Its interesting that when I first started off in archaeology we wanted to send some carbon samples from northern Florida for C14 dating. We were told that the analytical company did not have a baseline for that area. I don't know how familiar you are with the process, but above-ground atomic testing in the 1950s spread radioactive isotopes across the globe in varying amounts, depending on wind, distance, etc. Each area had to be tested to determine the natural background radiation in that area in order to calibrate the results.

Thus you are correct, we do not yet know what come chemical or metallic compounds are doing to archaeological samples or how modern materials degrade into other things. Do certain chemicals bind with magnetic ferric ions, thus nullifying or changing magnetic resonance dating? Are chemical compounds destroying blood collagen that we could extract from projectile points? What about the effects on enzymes we extract from pottery to tell us what was cooked in them? I don't think we can even begin to answer these questions yet. Often, archaeology is about catching up with technology, that is why we reserve samples for future, as yet undiscovered, methods.

Dear James,

I was interested following your questions and answers. From an historians point the sad fact is that only a tiny amount of past data (events, things, papers, bottle caps etc.) actually leaves traces for us to process. The possible information for archaeologists is even less than for historians. A conservative number of what we would use for our historical writing is less than 0.1% of actual traces what was left behind.

However, not all is lost. From a local history project many years ago we have found bottles from a beer brewery in Germany (around 1900). We were told that carbon dating was a waste of time and resources and it was refused to be done, but found a rough date for the bottle by matching its shape with newspapers ads of that time. So at least we know that the bottle was at some stage produced between 1904 and 1907 when that particular shape existed.

If all fails maybe this is another possible way finding dates for the caps.

Andreas,

Thank you for responding to the question. I used the soda bottle caps as example, particularly the plastic type, because the shape and size will endure for future archaeologists to find, but the print on them will be gone. Thus those archaeologists potentially could have many different bottle caps with no clue to what product they represent. This is true of many items of the post-World War II manufacturing boom. Think of all of the items around your house and then think if those metal or plastic or glass objects, many of them intricate, were broken into dozens, if not hundreds, of pieces. This is one of the things I am finding at a historic through modern site. Bits and pieces of historic or neo-historic colored plastic with no clue as to what they came from and not enough pieces recovered to make educated guesses.

I had the not so pleasurable opportunity to help excavated a ca. 1906 - 1922 soda bottling plant in Pennsylvania years ago. The bottling works refilled bottles from something like 21 different towns in 5 states. There was so much glass, whole and fragmented bottles, that one had to rake the artifacts into a 5 gal. bucket, dump it out onto a sheet of plyboard, and field sort and count them. I always wanted to excavate a bottle factory: the saying "careful what you wish for" certainly applied. We used patents/copy rights and advertisements from magazines and local newspapers to supplement dating the bottles.

One good source for dates of all kinds is the D'Arcy Collection. This is an alphabetical list of advertisements for products, brands, and companies, along with the date and reel number in the collection.

Hello, James!

In this consumerist age, I find that many of our objects are not quite "material" or too "material" but meaningless. I always think of Roland Barthes's extraordinary essay on "Plastic", and then I dream of future museums featuring Tupperware and Barbie Dolls where bewildered and clueless archaeologist will be making smallish dioramas featuring dead Barbies tucked into Tupperware coffins because some freak accident in anthropological interpretation...

:-D

Lilliana

Lilliana,

Oh, that brings to mind an English(?) artist who uses junk and trash found, I believe, along waterways and oceans to display in dioramas. I cannot remember his name, but some of his work is controversial for its imagery. I remember one that has I pile of trash and seaweed with Barbie.

I guess you could say that foremost I am an analyst. As such, it drives me crazy to not be able to identify something that I find in the archaeological record. But that is where the question is coming from, because I see the amount of historic artifacts that either we cannot date or we cannot identify, or both. When you think about the number of items manufactured/made during, say, the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, what is produced today likely constitutes a 10000 fold increase in that number. That is what future archaeologist will be facing. That will also be confounded by modern trash collecting practices, where we will see a reduction in the number of items at a house site that can be used to characterize the inhabitants due to most of their food containers and other stuff ending up in huge public or commercial waste disposal sites. And while there are now archaeologists who specialize in interpreting household trash from blocks of waste identified in dumps, all of it rarely can be linked back to the actual family dwelling.

 Don't worry, James, I am writing a more serious answer and will post it later. I just could not resist the temptation. Last month I wrote a paper of the work of artist Víctor Vázquez where he used Barbie Dolls. He found a large box full of these dolls in the trash in front of his apartment building. He could not resist using them in an installation about future archaeology... Here is an image.

Saludos, Lilliana

James, I'll look. There is a splendid young artist from Barbados, her last name is Costello, who is creating little cabinets of curiosities where she makes "fossils" pasting bottle caps and animal bone parts found on the ocean shores to make new "remnants", puts them is these little drawers with their explanations written in ink following the writing style of the 18 century...