You must have mellowed with old age Alasdair but then I am afraid if you 
have shed your angry yoing man persona  the grumpy old man phase awaits 
you down the road- though basically I couldn't agree with you more. (For 
Americans I was being rhetorical and humourous- these things are 
sometimes taken the wrong way due to cultural differences.).  I have 
been an enthusiast (if sometimes critical) for Americana archaeology for 
a couple of decades  as is shown by my long SHA membership and it isn't 
cheap for Europeans.  However, always I prefer to look at the quality 
and originality of the work before I ask how many and what degrees the 
person has. The great attraction to me of historical archaeology has 
always been its multi-disciplinarity and fiuzziness of its borders. 
However, having spent 30 years acquiring them at a very basic level I 
would point out that documentary research (like ceramics) requires its 
own set of skills and specialist knowledge base - but there is more than 
one way of gaining such skills. The more I have studied the history of 
archaeology and related disciplines the more I have realized how 
arbitrary many of most cherished conceptions are. An enthusiasm for ones 
own discipline is not  a bad thing but without a touch of humility and 
respect for colleagues from different backgrounds it risks becoming the 
refuge of fools.


paul


Alasdair Brooks wrote:
> " American fascist Imperialists", Paul?  I don't think I ever accused 
> them of being _fascists_.
>  
> More seriously, (and I realise we're beginning to move away from the 
> original poster's query about academic organisation at a specific 
> North American institution) these differences in archaeological 
> academic organisation between nations/continents, as already noted by 
> Paul and Geoff, have been of some concern to me for a few years now, 
> as anyone who remembers a related heated discussion on this very list 
> some 7-8 years ago will already be aware.
>  
> I've now worked professionally in the US, UK, and Australia (and will 
> be returning to the UK in the near future), and each country has its 
> own rich archaeological / historical archaeological tradition.  As 
> we've extensively noted, archaeology typically comes under the purview 
> of anthropology in North America and New Zealand, and is typically a 
> separate field broadly under the humanities in the UK, much of 
> continental Europe and Australia (at my current Australian 
> institution, archaeology - from early hominids through to historical 
> archaeology - is in the School of Historical and European Studies).
>  
> As far as I'm concerned, this is fine.  I've moved between each 
> region's tradition as needed, and - as Janice noted - often the 
> ability to undertake professional quality archaeology supersedes these 
> broad differences in disciplinary conception.
>  
> What causes me concern at times is that there appears to be a minority 
> in North America who, instead of accepting these rich divergent 
> disciplinary traditions and histories strongly argue that archaeology 
> - including historical archaeology - can only be anthropology, and 
> that those of us working in countries and regions that don't have an 
> anthropological tradition are essentially engaging in theoretically 
> poor archaeology.  I think this is ridiculous.  Those of us outside 
> North America are engaging in theoretically different historical 
> archaeology with its own disciplinary traditions, not theoretically 
> backwards archaeology, as has sometimes been argued.
>  
> What particularly baffles me is that I would have thought that 
> scholars with an anthropological training would have been open to the 
> idea that archaeologists practicing in other countries would have 
> their own historical archaeology culture that can differ from the 
> archaeological culture of North America, but is no less rich or 
> somehow inherently inferior for those differences.
>  
> Which ultimately is a plea on my part for trans-continental 
> understanding across archaeological traditions rather than a criticism 
> of any one region's approach.
>  
>
>  
>> I have trained in both archaeology and history with a bit of 
>> environmental sciences, historical anthroplogy and geography thrown 
>> in. I am still amazed at the miscomprehension of every discipline for 
>> every other one but I am worried by people who think there own is not 
>> full of its own biases.  Some disciplinary differences are based in 
>> practice such as archaeologists (excavators) unlike historians have a 
>> tendency of destroying their primary evidence. Some of the 
>> differences are to do with professionalisation ie boundary and career 
>> maintenance.  Academics are amazingly bad at applying the same 
>> critical eye at themselves as they do to their subject areas.
>>     
>
>  
>> US archaeology is anthropology based but Europeans (as geoff points 
>> out) mostly come from different traditions and tend to think 
>> 'American fascist Imperialists and that's just the printable words' 
>> if told they should be otherwise by Americans.
>>     
>
>
> paul
>
>