Cahokia

[E.P. Grondine]

OK - well - I guess you have your opinion on how a site should be managed, and they guy with 30 or more years of field experience has his. I know where I would put my money.

As I mentioned before, there was general gasping at the SEAC session.
Besides my opinion, yours, and Iseminger's, there's someone you're leaving out: the descendants of the people who built those sites. I won't pretend to speak for anyone except myself, but you may want to ask them what they think.

You may have noticed that my last post was an attempt to end this rather dumb conversation, but I seem to have failed. Maybe now?

"Dumb"? The stupidity was in the operations of the bulldozers at the site.

You have your opinion, I have mine, others' have theirs.

Since I'm unlikely to change your opinion, while you have changed mine, from "relieving" Iseminger immediately to giving him a trial before his peers, I don't think there's going to be any further progress in continuing on this topic, and I do appreciate your kind words.

Now I can stop.

[oldarchystudent]

Terminating a dumb, futile conversation is always a good idea.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi OAS -

Futile, yes.
Dumb, no.

As far as what I am up to....

When you get hit by one of these things, ultimately you're thankful for what is left, and you try your best to use it.

As far as my research goes, you need to understand that I can "stumble" across generally unknown sites. When I find lithics or sherds, I pick them up, take a look, and set them back down. I have been gifted with all I need for educational purposes...

I do have to confess to putting in my pocket and taking home a really crappy gun flint from Valley Forge. It is amazing that the troops were provided with it.

How the NPS missed it for all those years is beyond me - hence my decision to take the action that I did in this case.

[oldarchystudent]

The futility is what makes it dumb - here's the scenario...

Neither of us have any experience managing a site. Absolutely zero.

You have minimal field experience, I have only slightly more (when you add it all together - maybe a month).

But here we are debating a decision when we were not around for the debate, don't know all the details, and calling for, or defending against, forced resignations on the part of those that have decades more experience and were in on all the details that neither you or I have.

Expressing opinions and defending them is fine, but a protracted "you're wrong" - "no YOU'RE wrong" thread is a working definition of "dumb", yet message boards like this seem to thrive on them....

[E.P. Grondine]

The futility is what makes it dumb - here's the scenario...

Neither of us have any experience managing a site. Absolutely zero.

You have minimal field experience, I have only slightly more (when you add it all together - maybe a month).

But here we are debating a decision when we were not around for the debate, don't know all the details, and calling for, or defending against, forced resignations on the part of those that have decades more experience and were in on all the details that neither you or I have.

Expressing opinions and defending them is fine, but a protracted "you're wrong" - "no YOU'RE wrong" thread is a working definition of "dumb", yet message boards like this seem to thrive on them....

As I wrote before, the way the bulldozer was used has generated gasps in both the community of Iseminger's peers (SEAC - including site managers) and among the Native American community.

It is true we don't know all the details, just some of the major ones. That is why a SEAC session on this would be useful - there are other site managers who will have to deal with slump and knowing what happened in detail would be good.

Iseminger's book kind of skirts around those details.

For an earlier failure analysis report of mine from before my stroke, see:
http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc040400.html

[oldarchystudent]

Oh boy....

Well EP - if you want to carry Isemenger and your mad-on around with you for the rest of your life, that's your call. Seems like you have a thing for Mississippian sites in general, as well as Gault. I'm surprised any of these guys keep their job, not living up to your expectations like that.

Back to the dumb futility thing - this conversation certainly does not disappoint. I've been looking for a tactful and sometimes not so tactful exit point for a while now to no avail...

[E.P. Grondine]

Oh boy....

Well EP - if you want to carry Isemenger and your mad-on around with you for the rest of your life, that's your call. Seems like you have a thing for Mississippian sites in general, as well as Gault. I'm surprised any of these guys keep their job, not living up to your expectations like that.

I have nothing personal against Isemenger, and actually would prefer to have a nice conversation with him and find out what the hell happened.

Actually, I hadn't thought about this for a long time until you brought Cahokia up.
While Mississippian sites are fun and all that, my true passions lie elsewhere...
and that work is massive.

I've watched far worse occur... and do so regularly...

I'm not surprised that they keep their jobs. They learn to humbly take whatever is given...
and if they happen to get onto a really good site, their career is made by holding on to it.

As far as Gault goes, however interesting the clovis and pre-clovis are, that does not excuse at least trying to recover whatever is left of the other 13,000 years. That's someone's history...

Back to the dumb futility thing - this conversation certainly does not disappoint. I've been looking for a tactful and sometimes not so tactful exit point for a while now to no avail...

If you are looking for the exit point where I say you're perfectly correct, and then apologize for my remarks...

[oldarchystudent]

No I'm not so stupid as to expect a retraction and apology. I just see the same points coming up from you over and over again.

So I'll end it here without rebuttal to your last post. I've covered it all above.