This new blog is designed to collect important information, thoughts, ideas, opinions, and perspectives from American professional archaeologists and artifact collectors relevant to the prospects for eventually mending the long broken fences between the two camps and achieving more collaboration in the future. Its scope includes prehistoric archaeologists, historical archaeologists, collectors of prehistoric Native American artifacts, and collectors of historic-era artifacts (old bottles, coins, buttons, war artifacts, nails, brick, ceramic dolls, etc.) If you are an American artifact collector or a professional archaeologist, we need your help and participation in this blogging effort. If you wish to participate, please click on the About button in the wide, black strip at the top of this blog Main Page. When you arrive there, please read all that is written to better understand what we are doing here, why we are doing it, and how we are doing it.
When your About reading is done, please come back to the wide, black strip above on this Main Page and hover your mouse arrow over the really long, clickable buttons. Each of the 10 long buttons is a key question or topic on which we wish to collect information from you professional archaeologists and artifact collectors. Click on the buttons. In each instance, you will be taken to a blog page that explains the information we want to collect from you, and it provides you with brief instructions on what to do and an example of the kind of entry you can make.
We are very much interested in the questions professional archaeologists would like to ask artifact collectors about the disagreements that divide them, and we are equally interested in the questions artifact collectors would like to ask professional archaeologists about the disagreements that divide them. We are also interested in seeing the various answers to those questions, and the spontaneous discussions that ensue about those questions and answers. We would like the same for the other question buttons.
For the nonquestion buttons, please just click on them and enter the information we ask for there. We are interested in seeing what you have to say and the ensuing blog discussion that develops around each topic.
We realize you may not have long blocks of time to do this, so you can just respond only to those questions and topics that most interest you. You can also “bob” in and out of the discussions over time as they develop, just as you do on all other blogs. For those of you who really do want to say something under every question or topic, that would be wonderful.
We look forward to seeing all you have to say—whether it is small or large. All contributions are welcome. Thank you very much for your participation!! Have fun!!!
This blog is constructed to be user friendly. You DO NOT have to register, be a member of WordPress, or create your own blog page to ask a question, make a statement, or otherwise comment on this blog. Just type your comment directly into the provided Leave a Reply box at the bottom of each blog page and click to submit. If you wish, you may also type out your comment in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, copy it, and paste it into the Leave a Reply box. There are no limits on the lengths of your comments.
The recently established Oak Ridge Archaeological Research Institute in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (https://archaeologyinoakridge.wordpress.com/) is sponsoring this blog as a multi-year organizational research project in American archaeology.
Can Artifact Collectors and Archaeologists Find a Way to Get Along and Collaborate More? 