For many years, one of my favorite classroom devices in historical
archaeology was to ask the students to imagine that they had to make the
choice between saving--from some unnamed calamity--all master's theses
or all doctoral disser tations in anthropology, but not both. Like good
students, they usually looked to their Ph.D. holding professor and chose
the dissertations. Much to their surprise,
Iwouldrespondthatthetheseswould win withouteventakingtime to ponderthe
issue. The issue is clearly one of often naïve and rarely eloquent
theses full of good primary data versus sometimes more sophisticated and
better written works full of irrelevant theory and meaningless
statistics. Perhaps this is an overstate ment of the situation, but it
is not too far offthe mark. The University Microfilms International
efforts to make the titles of disser tations in North America and the
English speaking portions of Europe available through Dissertation
Abstracts is commendable. With only one minor exception, dissertations
in historical and underwater archaeology in the United States are to be
found listed in Dissertation Abstracts and thus are available for
purchase.