This specified area of archaeological theory/method was coined by Brian Schiffer and colleagues such as Bill Rathje at the University of Arizona in the 1970's (as a component of a broader Behavioural Arch.), and has become an increasingly influential component of current archaeological practice through its popularization and exportation to other academic departments (the arch. faculty at the University of Colorado/Boulder is a prominent example.) What's the premise? Not all arch. sites constitute 'abandonment sites', but all 'abandonment site' may be viewed as archaeological, in that they comprise the residue of locales of human activity no longer utilized - or, to use the sub-field's terminology, they are archaeological and not 'dynamic'. This simplifies matters, yet the important point seems to be that abandonment sites are 'special' for arch. research for several reasons. Principally, they represent rich resources for arch. data on both 'everyday life' and 'catastrophic' ocurrences, and may provide inferences regarding 'elusive' cultural values/worldviews as abandoned sites often hermetically seal a definite point in time in the life of a site - ie. its termination. In conjunction with 'Site Formation Processes' theory (also propounded by Shiffer, et. al.), then, both the decisions of the occupants (as to how and what to leave at the site and what to bring away, etc.) and the site condition at the moment of abandonment (not often available to arch.'s) may be inferred from the 'materialized departure' in the abandoned remnants of the 'dead' site. Subsequent formation processes - re-habitation, re-useage, plundering, natural site-disturbing developments, etc. - often occlude this direct window into a moment in the past; but that conscious and concerted efforts to leave a 'site' ocurred in pre-/history is indubitable (obviously, best examples may be Pompeii or Herculaneum, but many less dramatic but important examples come from the American Southwest and Central America (eg. Ceren in El Salvador).

The connection with Blg. 500 is clear: upon receiving alternate facilities, the engineering faculty, staff and students 'abandoned' the building, taking (or rather having maintenance crews take for them) what material objects would be necessary for their new accomodations. What is left when the archaeologists enter bldg. 500 to inspect their new facility? This is what the project visually explores. And while the informing inductive epistemology and conflation of object-behaviour and reductionists tendencies of Behavioural Arch. are not upheld, the usage of 'variation of artifact patterning' is productive. Moreover, the task of documenting an abandoned academic building is uniquely qualified for archaeologists. What perhaps would even be more appropriate and interesting, in conjunction with the other themes of this project (Reflexive Methodology, Archaeology of Contemporaneity, etc.), would be to investigate Bldg. 500 after the Archaeology Center has moved on to a 'new and improved' location. What would archaeologists leave behind as the traces of their past activities? An abandonment of archaeologists. . .

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