Greetings to everyone!
I needed to de-cloak and make some comment on this issue. I am disturbed by
the near total lack of comment from the American end of this discussion.
With only a very few noted exceptions, I'm rather disappointed in my friends
and colleagues for not addressing the original post.
I agree with the basic observation that American scholars tend toward
insular reading and citation. I think this problem tends to be
self-reinforcing. Am I correct in assuming that archaeologists of every
national stripe tend to publish in their own journals, centered upon a
continent or regions? In this discussion, for example, one could reasonably
argue that _Historical Archaeology_ focuses mostly upon North America (which
usually seems to exclude Mexico) and _JAHA_ upon Australia and it's Oceanic
neighbors. There will always be singular exceptions to these general
trends, and it is unfortunate we don't really have any statistics to
indicate the general patterns.
Don't take this as a critique of the journal editors. Editors can only
publish what scholars submit to them and what their reviewers recommend.
Since the major journals tend to send submissions to reviewers in their
region, the process of peer review seems like it structurally reinforces
this nationalism/regionalism. Simply put, Local authors strive to impress
local reviewers so they can get published in local venues.
I'm not convinced that this would be an easy problem to fix, nor am I
certain that CRM reports or our journals are where we should change the
system. Consider these points:
1. Contextual, site-specific studies should focus upon very localized
issues. We should dig locally. Current historical or post-medieval
archaeology in most of the English-speaking world tends to be interpretive
and contextual, and must therefore engage with extremely localized themes
and histories. Much of the anti-processual, contextual, and post-modern
literature specifically criticized the supra-generalized and thus
de-humanized explanations of archaeological observations.
2. The vast majority of Historical Archaeology occurs in a CRM environment.
Most of this work is very good, and some is excellent. Some reports, of
course, are rather poorly researched. I expect this link to mitigation is
true in other countries outside the USA. Can we realistically expect CRM
field technicians and supervisors to read international scholarship ON A
HABITUAL BASIS? I admire those field supervisors who are able to maintain
expertise in all the LOCAL histories with which they work. Often, these
crews work in many, many towns; several regions; and even multiple states or
marine territories. This is particularly challenging, because CRM
excavations and mitigations (which are different) are driven by
significance. Please correct me if I am mistaken, but significance
designations are rarely made because of international elements. Almost
always, the significance of a site is bound in an association with a
regional or local figure of historic importance OR potential to contribute
scientific information about regional historic processes.
Before the "think globally, dig locally" folks start jumping up-and-down
(and I include myself in that list), understand that I believe global
processes and articulations are very important for intuiting site
significance. State SHPOs and government supervisors already hate
boiler-plate historic contexts. Site specific CRM reports should be richly
detailed localized archaeological ethnographies. What we need are more
archaeologically-driven global syntheses that our CRM colleagues can CITE
when developing their localized research designs and evaluating sites.
These major publications would be books or major articles-- not site
reports.
3. Our educational system reinforces our insular behavior. I just finished
teaching my first graduate-level seminar last semester. I constantly
struggled with a number of simple, but difficult issues. I felt much
anguish over this precise issue. Given a limited amount of class time and
reading volume, which photocopy should I ask my students to read-- a good
paper on a Chinese Sojourner railroad workers camp in Nevada written by an
American archaeologist OR a similarly good paper on a similar site in
Australia or Belize? Keep in mind that in about 18 months, these students
hope to interview with CRM firms in the USA and the archaeologists
conducting the interviews plan to send them to work in local situations
here. The interviewers also all know the former article, while only the top
echelon in the firm knows the latter. The upper level archaeologists may
not even be interviewing. I resolved this conflict by asking the students
to read the "classics" that are well known, but trying to provide full
references for them pointing them to the other authors that I knew. Is this
a similar concern downunder and across the pond?
Let's also be very honest. Students often can not afford to belong to a
single professional association, let alone international societies.
Combined with this, most of our academic institutions have radically
shrinking budgets, and in libraries with limited space, technical journals
very often get the axe. The internet poses an interesting potential
solution to this crisis for students (and professionals!) but we must keep
this reality check in mind.
4. Our journals rarely include articles on foreign sites by non-American
scholars, and more frequently by American archaeologists working in other
countries. While I am excited by the trend of international perspectives in
historical archaeology and glad that American historical archaeologists are
working overseas, but I am also a bit nervous about this. I am waiting to
see how this academic trend plays out, but I'm not convinced we in the USA
are being very critical about our international pretensions. What are we
doing to keep "international historical archaeology" from becoming just
another form of American/Western intellectual imperialism? How many of us
who work abroad truly meet our foreign colleagues as equal peers? How do we
allow local peoples to contribute to our research designs? I'm not as
concerned about US Archaeologists in Oz or Sweden, but I wonder about those
working in Honduras or Nigeria. What are we doing to prevent historical
archaeology from becoming similar to environmental or development programs
insensitive to what local peoples consider important? Is my fear excessive?
Am I way out of line here? I'd really like to know what the non-American
readers of HISTARCH have to say about this issue.
5. Are we expecting all archaeologists to command literature in a
"Hobsbawm-like" or "Braudelian" scope? How many other scholars in history,
ecology, or geology command their literature on such a scale? Are we being
realistic?
Now that I've produced such a long litany of concerns, I wanted to add my
positive thoughts. We certainly need to evolve our scholarship toward a
global community of academic discussion. I also understand this trend to be
rooted in general social and intellectual globalization. We are, after all,
trying to explain how "things" became "this way." The "Questions that
Count" about the modern world MUST apply to a global academic discourse.
I'll echo what others have said on this thread because I believe that the
human contact created through attendance at overseas meetings are very
important. Much of my experience with Australian archaeology came after
Iain Stuart "picked me up" in the bar at the SHA meeting in Cincinnati with
the line, "Excuse me, but I couldn't help but notice you're reading a book
on bricks." Our initial meeting resulted in an exchange of articles and
references. I know that the SHA has taken its meeting overseas in the past
and there is discussion of doing it again (York, UK). Historical
archaeology has had excellent visibility at the World Archaeology Congress
(although I've never been able to afford attending one!)
I'm also pleased that the organizations committees are discussing how to
underwrite student expenses at such meetings, so that they can hold costs as
far down as feasible. Generally speaking, no student or young professional
can afford such a decadent thing as a week overseas for a scholastic
meeting. While I don't believe this particular concern is an argument
against international congresses, I am very happy when professional peers
strive to resolve the problem they create. Congratulations should go to
William Moss and our peers in the SHA who sponsored the Quebec meeting in
2000. After running such a successful and well-attended meeting, the
sponsors found there was money left over afterward. (Imagine that!)
Instead of dividing up the surplus, the organizers voted (I expect in
concert with the sponsors) to convert the surplus into an endowed
scholarship for French-speaking Canadian students to attend future SHA
meetings and present papers. Thanks to them for their generosity!
I'm also excited by the trend to convert complete runs of journals onto
CD-ROMs. This makes me hope that I might eventually convince our library to
purchase a CD set. Increasingly, many of our journals are professionally
indexed, that articles increasingly appear on database searches (such as
WorldCat or FirstSearch), and perhaps soon we will be able to digitally
order articles. This trend will only increase the circulation of ideas.
Are there any plans out there to convert more journals into PDF databases or
to take journals on-line? I know our members debate, but the SHA is
discussing membership options that include digital journal subscriptions
instead of print. I also like the idea that CRM firms try to make their
reports downloadable from their corporate websites. This will be a
tremendous boon to the field. Even if one finds reference to obscure
reports, getting a copy of it is sometimes outright maddening.
Perhaps the time has come to organize a volume of syntheses? Will someone
edit a big pioneering book? For right now, I must return to writing my own
dissertation (about the globalisms and localisms required to understand the
pottery industry in nineteenth century Utah, USA!). If I don't mail some
chapters to my advisor soon, he's going to send me Anthrax. I hope someone
takes up this challenge!
Cheers,
Tim
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Timothy James Scarlett
Incipient Assistant Professor of Archaeology
Program in Industrial History and Archaeology
Department of Social Sciences
Michigan Technological University
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, Michigan 49931-1295 USA
Tel (906) 487-2113 Fax (906) 487-2468 Internet [log in to unmask]
MTU Website: www.industrialarchaeology.net
SHA Website: www.sha.org SIA Website: www.sia-web.org
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The Anthropologist is a myth teller, an epic poet who serves to glorify
humanity by "composing and reciting, with skill and passion, the human
myth."
-- Myles Richardson "Anthropologist-- The Myth Teller" American Ethnologist
1975, pp. 530.
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