ABSTRACT
Preliminary judgments offered in New Perspectives in Archaeology indicate happiness with the potential transformation archaeology is capable of, but some doubt about whether it can ever really be achieved. Considering the state of the history of technology and the unconscious state of archaeology, neither discipline is concerned with how technology affects culture and how technology is manipulated by culture. Historians of technology have been concerned with several central themes: the relationship of technology to science, engineering, and art; the nature of invention; and “how things are done and made”. Labeling themselves “antiquarians of technology”, the historians of technology have discovered that they are rarely concerned with technology as a social phenomenon. Mormons built fences throughout the nineteenth century and they continue to build fences, walls, partitions, and other separators. As in the nineteenth century, fences do the same things for Mormons, and Mormons do the same things with fences.
