I wanted to bring to your attention two television shows that are very disturbing to those of us who care about preserving our cultural heritage. The first, set to air on Spike TV, is called American Diggers, and the second, on (of all places) National Geographic. American Diggers, in particular, promotes digging up artifacts without regard for context and selling them for a profit. The show may also mislead people - although the artifacts on the show were removed from private property, remember that removing any artifact from federal land is a crime.
A good summary of the problem from my friend Holly:
"This show promotes mining the past for personal monetary gain. The artifacts only tell part of the story- where they are found, soil staining, soil chemistry, associated artifacts, pollen, seeds, etc etc can give us an entire picture of what exactly was happening at that place in that time that led to that item being there. That knowledge is gone once the site is destroyed. Even for historic items- the poor, the children, the young, they are not in the texts from the time. Their stories are preserved in the sites left by them. Archaeologists are trained to "hear" those stories by exavating properly, knowing what samples to take, and what to look for in the dirt itself. This show promotes destruction of all of that"
Please consider signing the following petitions:
http://www.change.org/petitions/national-geographic-society-wwwnationalgeographiccom-stop-airing-the-television-show-diggers
If you want to find out what archaeologists actually do, check out this article!
http://newsok.com/artifacts-uncovered-through-archaeology-fills-in-clues-of-states-history/article/3651967?custom_click=pod_headline_life
All the best,
Elsbeth
