There is much common ground for engineering a more sane and meaningful future. In the realm of historic preservation, we have a theme most familiar to the members of our profession, and perhaps the one that most feel comfortable in pursuing. Indeed, the preservation of our world's historic and cultural heritage makes sense to archaeologists, although the rate at which our archaeological heritage is being lost in California and elsewhere makes me wonder how effective we have been. Like the city of Troy, we keep building upon our past, but unlike Troy, our developments often tend to replace rather than bury the past. Although many of us conduct cultural resource management as a mitigation of development's harsh realities, the destruction and loss of the resource base continues to grow, often as an indirect result of our so-called mitigation.
Historic preservation needs to mean just that, the preservation of our historic heritage.
Instead, when it comes to archaeological heritage, we practice a philosophy that seems to me to be more similar to conservation than preservation. Pinchot, who argued for conservation, went on to found the U.S. Forest Service, while Muir, favoring preservation, founded the Sierra Club and helped influence the creation of the National Park Service. The argument of how best to protect the nation's forests, many of which have seen a terrific decrease in their bio-diversity, continues today, more than a century after Muir and Pinchot began the debate. While some may argue that trees are renewable resources, and thus conservation is a feasible alternative to total preservation or destruction, few will make a similar argument for archaeological resources. Indeed, archaeological resources are not renewable, they are finite and precious.