On June 2, Mary Ellin D'Agostino wrote:
 
>Training is
>involved, but each individual does not and cannot have knowledge of all
>aspects of a field of study--history or archaeology.  Do all historians
>require a detailed knowledge of the price fluctuationas of tobacco in
>17th and 18th century Virginia in order to say something meaningful about
>Virginian history in those time periods?  I don't think so....
 
Both history and archaeology are methods.  What happened to "the spade does
not lie"?  What happens to our research when the peoples we are studing are
no longer around to inform our search and have left no records.  The past
year I have been studying Sparta.  They left no histories, very little poetry,
and almost no incriptions.  Does that make them unknowable, or can we
reconstruct using methods that have been successful elsewhere?
 
Oral traditions, letters, vestigal cultures are useful sources but that
should have little effect on our ability to apply our methods.  Almost
certainly I will never know if my findings on the Spartans are factual in
the way that an 8th cen Lacaedomonean could.  But it seems clear that a
5th cen Laceadomonean would do me little good at all, and would probably
offer some very convincing explanations that were totaly wrong.  Greek history
is full of false, convincing explanations offered by after the fact reporters.
 
I think keeping a clear distinction between methods and sources will
satisfy our duty to truth, even if it won't advance the social values of late
twentieth century society.
 
Kenneth Gauck
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