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3 Archaeology in the Lower Mississippi Valley Robert C. Dunnell Introduction There is ample evidence that the way we view ourselves and our past exerts a significant, sometimes profound, influence on the practice of archaeology. History does matter; it does have lessons for the present. After a long period of neglect, the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV), and the Southeast generally, have been blessed with a number of excellent histories of archaeological endeavors (e.g., Hoffman 1999; Johnson, ed. 1993; Johnson 2002; Lyon 1996; Rolingson 1999, 2001; Rolingson, ed. 2001; Tushingham et al. 2002) in recent years. Further, the University of Alabama Press series of Southeastern Classics, edited by Stephen Williams, has made many of the scarce original sources available to a broad audience, promising to stimulate additional interest in historical research. O’Brien and Lyman (ed. 2001) have also reprinted key documents. The seemingly obligatory section on “history of research” or “archaeological background” seen in modern cultural resources management (CRM) reports appears to have led to a competition that ferrets out new historical details with regularity. As a result, I wondered how one might make a contribution in such a densely populated, well-researched field in a brief essay. Most of the history of archaeology has been written within the same paradigm as current among archaeologists for constructing prehistory. Thus the dominant mode employed in structuring the history of archaeology has been culture-historical—a set of periods are devised, a characteristic approach for each period identified, and exemplars recited in support of the characterization (e.g., Daniel 1975, 1981; Willey and Sabloff 1970, 1980, 1993). Other tacks have been taken occasionally (e.g., Brown 1994; O’Brien 1996a; Trigger 1989), but none of this history was organized in a manner relevant to the conservation and management of the archaeological record, the central theme of this volume. To realize the promise of archaeological history for present practice, one not Archaeology in the Lower Mississippi Valley / 17 only has to get the“facts”1 right, but to identify relevant descriptive parameters and an appropriate theory with which to explain the facts. These are plainly choices made by writer and reader. Here, I have focused on what might be described as the growth of scientific2 knowledge about the archaeological record, rather than what archaeologists and others believe and/or say about it. The latter tack has been the usual target of archaeological histories. This is not to say that that kind of interpretive approach is unimportant, but that our knowledge about the archaeological record is critical in a resource-management context , whereas interpretations are not (or should not be, Resource Protection Planning Process [RP3] and “state plans” notwithstanding) of the same importance . To understand the growth of archaeological knowledge, I look at three factors: 1) motivations—i.e., why an observation/investigation was made; 2) source of funding; and 3) conceptions of the nature of the record. Motivation is tough enough to ascertain even contemporaneously—traditionally in this country we have twelve people vote on it. From a scientific perspective, motivation pertains only to reason-giving rather than explanation (Sellars 1963). Even so, the stories we tell ourselves about why we do what we do, do pass for cause in our culture and provide a link between our history and the literature we generate about it. For the purpose of assessing the impact and shifting emphases of motivation in archaeology in the LMV, I have distinguished five classes of motives: commercial, curiosity, heritage, political, and scientific. Of course, not many acts or individuals can be neatly assigned a single motive, but this complexity does not preclude linkages between archaeological knowledge and motive. Commercial motives are those that treat the archaeological record as a commodity . For professionals this conjures up looting and other pejoratives, but anyone who makes a living from the archaeological record can have commercial motives. Commercial motives are and have been a powerful shaper of archaeological knowledge. Curiosity designates the desire to know about something that lies outside contemporary common experience. Heritage motivation is part of a larger preservationist ethic that construes surviving elements of the past as significant just because they are surviving symbols of someone’s real or imagined past. This motivation underlay most of the initial CRM legislation . Political motives entail the use of the record to further contemporary political objectives. While one normally associates such motives with European archaeology in the first half of the last century, they also...

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