In message , Diana Wall <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Dear Fellow Histarchers:
>
>I would like to follow up on the recent discussion on the insularlity shown
>by historical archaeologists in their approach to the field and give
>histarchers a chance to put references to their favorite studies where their
>mouths are.
>
Dear Diana,

My first thought was 'hurrah! I can post about a book I read, very
slowly, while the conversation was going on and by the time I finished
it, it was too late'.

My second thought was - do you want us to limit our choices to studies
which themselves take a global approach?

The book I was reading was Andrén, A. (1998)
_Between Artefacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global
Perspective_ (0-306-45556-0).  It was particularly relevant at the time
of discussion because Andrén skips like a lamb over the whole subject of
Historical Archaeology in Oceania. Which I  think is a pity.  The other
major weakness of the book as a survey is the failure to look equally at
post-colonial archaeology meaning 'archaeology done by post-colonial
archaeologists' and 'the archaeology of the post-colonial period' - or
even 'the archaeology of the period after (European) colonisation'.  In
discussing historical archaeology in India, for example, I am left
wondering whether the archaeology of European colonies is being ignored
by Andrén, or by archaeologists in India, or by both.

But this is a slim book, and I'm really arguing for it to be twice the
size.  The almost ethnographic study of historical archaeologists around
the world (which results in a very useful bibliography) is presented as
background to thought-provoking ideas about archaeology and text ...
which I am going to think about some more.

With best wishes to all

Pat
(who can swamp this list with references to Dutch colonies, if that's
what's wanted)
--
Pat Reynolds
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   "It might look a bit messy now, but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)