DIGGING FOR DOLLARS: THE IMPACT OF THE NEW DEAL ON THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOG

American archaeology as an academic scientific sub-discipline of anthropology has existed for over 140 years. Archaeology was compartmentalized both institutionally and interpretively in the United States by geographic/culture regions. It does not exhibit the binding criteria of a paradigm associated with Kuhnian development. Instead, the development and the professionalization of American archaeology are traceable through institutional growth and the spread of a managerial paradigm. The institutional growth was four-faceted: government, university, museum, and private. The evolution of the discipline has witnessed the growing dominance of university based archaeology. The managerial paradigm also evolved. Originally, it comprised field research in a variety of methods, cataloguing, and publishing. University stature gave it more scientific technique.;The paradigm also came to include political skills as the academic based archaeologists expanded their control through various academic groups and government branches. Each was successively more national in scope but all were controlled by other disciplines notably anthropology. The contention here is that the unique environment of the government relief programs hastened the evolution and the professionalization of American archaeology by expanding its opportunities, both in the field and politically. The New Deal projects gave university archaeologists the chance to negotiate for funding and for publishing with the federal government on their own. The New Deal relief structure joined more academic units together and further fixed both their position as the leaders of discipline and presence in the federal government. The end result of 1930's relief archaeology was the foundation of broad-based academic archaeology that moved beyond regional identification and narrow interpretation and a stronger presence in the federal government.;Materials researched in National archives, private collections, interviews and secondary materials demonstrate the political and institutional growth through time. Methodological criteria utilized in this study to analyze the changes and relationships are: the specific elements of growth of communication networks, hiring criteria, controls of publication and status, public acceptance, distinguishability amongst the elements of the sub-discipline and other academic disciplines, acceptance by the public, development of dynamic leaders and changing interpretation.