Photographing the Past, Public Production

The agreement between the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution in 1945, which committed the latter agency to the scientific responsibility for archeological investigations in the Missouri River Basin, touched off the greatest series of integrated archeological investigations over a wide area that this country has ever seen. The archeologist worked with the rushing waters of each new Missouri River Basin reservoir virtually at its heels. If the work was to be done, it must be done quickly; thus, revolutionary techniques and new ideas in excavation were tried and many have proven successful. Yesterday, power earth-moving equipment cleared the earth overburden cheaper and quicker than the man with the shovel, and, today, the airplane is coming into its own as a tool of the archeologist in the Missouri Basin.
Although individual supervising archeologists have occasionally used light airplanes for photographing particular sites from the air, no over-all coordinated archeological survey of this type had ever been attempted in the United States prior to the summer of 1952, when a special aerial mission was authorized by the Smithsonian Institution to photograph archeological sites and pertinent related features in the Basin of the Missouri River.
The justification for the aerial photographic mission, flown during the summer of 1952, was the tremendous size of the salvage job. Last year American Antiquity, journal of the Society for American Archeology, reported that there were at least 56 archeological field surveys and excavations under way during 1951. In 1952, 13 expeditions, or roughly one-third of the total of the archeological field projects in the whole of the United States last year, were operative in the reservoirs of the Missouri River Basin Project. Of those18 expeditions, 9 were parties of the Smithsonian Institution, working in cooperation with the National Park Service, the Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of Reclamation; and 9 were non-Federal institutions.

1945年，美国国家公园管理局（National Park Service）与史密森学会（Smithsonian Institution）达成协议，由后者承担密苏里河流域（Missouri River Basin）考古调查的科学研究职责，此举催生了美国有史以来规模最大的区域性整合考古调查项目。考古工作者几乎赶在密苏里河流域每一座新建水库蓄水前开展作业。若要完成抢救性考古工作，必须分秒必争；因此，考古发掘领域的革命性技术与全新理念得以尝试，其中多数已被证实行之有效。彼时，动力土方设备相较于人工铲掘，能以更低成本、更快速度清除遗址覆土；如今，航空飞行器已在密苏里流域考古工作中崭露头角并得到广泛应用。尽管个别负责监管的考古学家偶尔会使用轻型飞机航拍特定遗址，但在1952年夏季之前，美国从未开展过此类全面协调的考古航拍勘测。1952年夏季，史密森学会批准了一项专项航空任务，对密苏里河流域内的考古遗址及相关关联遗存进行航拍测绘。此次1952年夏季开展的航空航拍任务，其立项依据在于本次抢救性考古作业的体量极其庞大。1951年，美国考古学会（Society for American Archeology）会刊《美国古物》（American Antiquity）曾报道，全美至少有56项考古野外调查与发掘项目同步推进。1952年，密苏里河流域工程的水库区域内共有13支考古工作队在作业，这一数量约占1951年全美考古野外项目总量的三分之一。在这18支工作队中，9支隶属于史密森学会，与国家公园管理局、美国陆军工程兵团（Corps of Engineers）及垦务局（Bureau of Reclamation）合作开展工作；另外9支则来自非联邦机构。