> I am not for needless division of the discipline, but at risk of stating
>the obvious, in a pragmatic sense I do think there is a difference in the
>training of historical vs. prehistoric archaeologists that is important.
>That is, unless academic departments of archaeology REQUIRE independent
>research in primary historical documents as part of their curriculum, with
>the same emphasis that they put on getting fieldwork experience, not ALL
>of the archaeologists they turn out are necessarily qualified to do
>historical archaeology.  It would be like turning out prehistoric
>archaeologists who wanted to work in the Southwest with no knowledge of
>ceramics, or typology, or even the culture history of the region.  I am
>not suggesting that all archaeology students should be required to do
>this kind of research at the graduate level, but certainly those who plan on
>doing any historical archaeology should.  There are some departments that
>do require archival work.  And there are many archaeologists who have taken
>it upon themselves to get experience in asking anthropological questions of
>the archives (more power to them).  However a sense of the importance of
>such training/experience (and it would be nice if there was some more
>support for this in anthropology departments) to being a historical
>archaeologist seems to be lacking in some (but not all) of the
>recent debate on this list, in terms of disciplinary definitions as well
>as job searches.
>
>For what it's worth...
>
>--
>Minette Church
>University of Pennsylvania
>[log in to unmask]
>
As an undergrad in the Archaeology program at the University of West
Florida, we were required to dig into the special collections at our
library, search for primary documents, compare old maps, etc. for a required
paper on some aspect of history in Pensacola. At the graduate level, the use
of archives for research in Hist. Arch. is a given at UWF.
My .01.
 
 
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