Buffalo's Opportunity

But there’s a new resurgence of this interest today. At one point in the re-development of the Illinois and Michigan Canal – which you will hear much more about tomorrow – we needed to drain a length of the canal to reconstruct it. When we let the water out we found several canal boats stuck in the mud on the bottom. Which led to a whole program of lectures and visits by school kids and tours and education. More than half of the people of this little town of 7,000 were involved in one way or another. So, that’s a kind of homespun example of the power of archaeology to attract our attention.

Recently, during the fires at Mesa Verde, the ancient Native American cliff-dwellings in Southwestern Colorado, there was an extraordinary level of both local and national media coverage and public interest. People were concerned. People care about archaeology.