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Reviews
| Doing Archaeology: A Cultural Resource Management Perspective. By Thomas F. King. Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2005. 167 pp., illus., diags., appendices, notes, bibl., index. $21.95 pb (ISBN 1-59874-003-2).
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The preface to Thomas F. King's Doing Archaeology succinctly outlines his objective. He intends the book to serve as an introduction to archaeological practices and ideologies for those not in the field. This anticipated audience comprises two distinct groups: students (both precollege and college) and those involved in CRM (cultural resource management) who are not archaeologists but who will work with them as consultants or fellow professionals.
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1
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Chapter one, "What's This All About?" reiterates the intent of the book, with subheadings such as Who Are You? and What Is Cultural Resource Management? King also introduces himself and discusses his background. He is the main character of the book, for he draws heavily on his own work for illustrative examples. An important part of the chapter, What Archaeology Is Not, addresses and corrects misconceptions about what archaeologists are and what they do. They do not, King explains, hunt for dinosaurs, nor do they do their work in search of treasure, as Indiana Jones—someone to whom King often refers as an example of culturally perpetuated myths about archaeology.
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2
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Chapters two and three discuss what archaeology is and who does it. They also address issues pertinent to both CRM and related archaeological work, such as how those providing funding affect projects. Chapters four through seven are the meat of the book. They paint an accurate picture of what archaeology truly is and what kind of career one should expect working as an archaeologist. These chapters also highlight what archaeologists are called on to do and why, as well as what career paths one may take with a degree in archaeology.
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3
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The book succeeds in its main intent, which is to relate archaeology to CRM, which King defines as a "fancy term for trying to take care of what's important to people for cultural reasons" (p. 12). The book also succeeds in correcting the erroneous popular culture image of archaeology as a romantic, almost swashbuckling, career path. King, instead, underscores the real importance of archaeology. He uses an almost reverent tone but couples this reverence with a dose of realism, emphasizing that archaeologists are responsible for their actions and that personal gain should be the last thing on their minds. He wants readers to put aside lofty ideas of archaeology and to take a more realistic approach with the idea of "archaeology in your own backyard." Archaeology, as King stresses, is as much about the unnamed industrial worker as it is about the greatest pharaohs of Egypt.
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4
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King's opening acknowledgments set the tone for the content of the book, which is heavy with professional anecdotes and name-dropping. Although he intends the book to be a straightforward and rudimentary introduction to those unfamiliar with archaeology, he glosses over much that students would find important, devoting less than one page to most major ideas. Instead, he provides biographies, both personal and professional, of archaeologists. Whether King intended these biographical sketches to show the possible career paths of archaeologists is uncertain.
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5
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King used the "folksy" style of writing found in Doing Archaeology in at least one of his previous books, Cultural Laws and Practices. Although never explicitly stated, King's intent in doing this seems to be to simplify what is potentially complicated terminology for those who only need to know archaeology on a casual level, thereby rendering it less threatening. It worked well in Cultural Laws and Practice, a work that deals with the potentially overwhelming detail of CRM laws, but the same tone fails in Doing Archaeology. The topics he addresses in Doing Archaeology are basic enough to be handled in a simple and straightforward way. At times, his tone becomes blatantly patronizing and his information wrong, such as when he comments that most architectural historians are "enamored only of stuff with columns on the front—high style mansions and stuff" (p. 137), implying that the protection of a humble house would be left entirely in the lap of the hapless archaeologist.
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6
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King's approach is so basic that it raises the question of how effective his intended audiences would find the work. For example, he outlines what archaeologists do in their careers to enlighten professionals in CRM who are not archaeologists, yet the information he provides is so basic that one questions how CRM professionals could be unaware of much of it. At other points, King's intent seems to be to give an eyewitness account of the life of a modern archaeologist. At times, his writing has a somewhat defensive stance, as if he were defending the value of his life's work. In the end, it is difficult to understand whether he is writing an introduction to archaeology or a treatise on archaeology's value.
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7
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