Source:  100,000 prehistorians and most historians assuming they have ever heard of Historical Archaeology. A few historians have recently done much better - e.g. Simon Shama (2005) ROUGH CROSSING: BRITAIN, THE SLAVES AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION and David Hackett Fisher (2008) CHAMPLAIN'S DREAM.


Your quote is from Deetz but I am not sure of the source. It reminds me of when I was asked to read Ivor Noel Hume's full site report ms. on Martin's Hundred for possible publication by U of Penn Press. It is a spectacular site report and, as usual, very well written about an amazing 17th century site. However, at the end Hume  says why bother ever doing such an excavation again!!. I urged its publication and do not remember if we got the author to take out that statement. It is amazing how historical archaeologists manage to shoot themselves in the foot with such statements or even define their specialization out of existence.


Robert L. Schuyler
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA l9l04-6324


________________________________
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Barbara Voss <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2017 1:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: looking for source for Deetz quote

Dear colleagues:

I'm trying to track down the source of a quote often attributed to Jim Deet=
z -

"Historical archaeology is the most expensive way in the world to learn som=
ething we already know."

Wikipedia's Historical Archaeology page attributes this to Deetz 1991:1, bu=
t the webpage does not list a Deetz 1991 citation. Wikipedia lists a longer=
 quote than the one I remember:

"Historical archaeology has several definitions. One of the more unfortunat=
e ones -- which is certainly not true... is that historical archaeology is =
the most expensive way in the world to learn something we already know."

Google failed me, so I'm turning to something better - the HistArch hive-mi=
nd. Any leads?

Thanks!
Barb

-----------------------------------------------
Barbara L. Voss, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
450 Serra Mall, Bldg. 50, Main Quad
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305-2034
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https://web.stanford.edu/dept/anthropology/cgi-bin/web/?q=3Dnode/75
https://stanford.academia.edu/BarbaraVoss