Quotations ...

An interesting news release about research in the Po River Valley of Italy notes that researchers measuring cocaine residue in flowing water have concluded that many more people take the drug than official national estimates previously suggested. [Cocaine in surface waters: a new evidence-based tool to monitor community drug abuse Ettore Zuccato, Chiara Chiabrando, Sara Castiglioni, Davide Calamari, Renzo Bagnati, Silvia Schiarea and Roberto Fanelli Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source 2005, 4:14 (5 August 2005) This article is available free of charge, at EH]. A cocaine residue called benzoylecgonine (BE), is present in flowing river and sewage waters because it is excreted in the urine of cocaine users. This residue is a by-product of metabolism in the human body, and cannot be produced by other means according to the researchers.

Zuccato's Italian work reminds one of Richard Marlar's work on myoglobin a few years ago. Marlar and his team found evidence of myoglobin in a human coprolite. In both instances (Zuccato et al. and Marlar et al.), the researchers found and measured the presence specific molecular artifacts that had been deposited by human behavior. Many argue that archaeology is a science of observing and recovering material culture -- as it persists and dissipates in time and space -- from a variety of social, economic and natural contexts. Zuccato et al., and Marlar et al., have done something like archaeology at its disciplined, basic best.

[ ... Interestingly, the Navajo & Hopi recently presented a similar type of basic science hypothesis -- that artificial snow made from effluent will contain the presence of small and large amounts of endocrine disruptors in the treated effluent -- something that Zuccato or Marlar could actually test... ]

Humans tell stories, and science research is one type of story telling. More disciplined scientists limit their observations and speculation based on a principle known as Occam's Razor.

The problem with archaeology (and science results in general ) is not science, but interpretation. We may find the goods (or the smoking gun), but interpretation has its limits for a number of reasons -- negative evidence, questionable contexts or methods, overreaching conclusions, plausible alternative explanations, partisan politics, cultural conservatism, willful ignorance, prejudice...

In this age, our public science sound bytes sometimes come down to nothing more than unthinking, duplicitous, and boorish dogma politics (e.g.; "ID" debates at the national level; compromised scientific objectivity at the local or individual level). Pick a measurement scale -- archaeology (and science) risk abuse and misappropriation.

Many of us are excited to attend the Pecos Conference to see the disciplined and boorish -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We are hopeful each time we make this pilgrimage.

Qualitative and Quantitative and Political don't fool us. We know well that some things will remain hidden, that not all cards can be played, that participants and observers often arrive with a hidden agenda or two.

At the end of the day, when clarity and transparency strike the razor of science, we know it when we see it.

Brian Kenny