Fascism -Kid-tested, Mother-approved?

My boss, you'd really like him. He's white, but was raised at the Pine Ridge Lakota Rez. He actually knew someone who was at Little Bighorn when he was a kid. He pretty much takes the Native American's side on most issues. Maybe not all the interpretations, but he has little use for the guys who are saying that some of the paleo peoples here in North america may have come from Europe. Which is theoreticaly possible, but the evidence is only enough to suggest the possibility, not to support it. But I digress. i'm not sure why it is that many archaeologists have such a hard time interacting with the public. I think it may be that in archaeology, you deal with so many things that are concrete ( pieces of potery, numbers of nails, etc) that they become convinced that interpretations of history that have nothing to do with the archaeological record are frogwash. ( I think I just made up that last word) I think that people's beliefs about what may have happened in the past, no matter what they are, are worth listening to, if only for how much it tells you about how people percieve the past, which is as important as trying to figure out what really happened. Then by comparing the two, you gain insight into how humans view the world. Man, I'm feeling smart tonight. or maybe I just had one of those flashes of insight, or i happened to have one of the lessons I read about back in grad school finally sink in. whoa. Anyway, one thing everyone should realize about archaeology is how really little the material record tells you about what went on in peoples lives. We can really only talk about the things they did that left physical traces. We can tell you theree was a campfire in one spot, but not what the stories were that were told around it. We can tell you when certain stone tools were used, but not who used it. So much of archaeology is based on assumptions, and I think a lot of archaeologists tend to forget that. Ok, all done.