Dear Fellow Histarchers:

I would like to follow up on the recent discussion on the insularlity shown
by historical archaeologists in their approach to the field and give
histarchers a chance to put references to their favorite studies where their
mouths are.

Beginning September 2002, Nan Rothschild and I are team teaching at Columbia
University and the CUNY Graduate Center a graduate course which we have
(perhaps over-ambitiously) entitled "Historical Archaeology: A Global
Perspective."  It has occurred to us that it might be helpful for us all to
put out a request on Histarch to subscribers from around the world for
references for the studies that you look on as among the best or most
interesting in our field.  Please post the references on Histarch, or if you
prefer, send them to me off list.

Please include along with the reference a few words about the study - why
it's interesting, etc.  And limit the studies for the most part to published
articles and book for reasons of accessibiltiy - please do not include the
grey literature except in  extraordinary instances.

After we've received the  submissions, we will organize the references and
post them on the list for anyone who wants to down load them (much as
Silliman handled the list of  movies and novels dealing with colonialism a
few months ago).

Unfortunately, we are limited to works in English, but would certainly like
to include studies from Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, Ireland,
Pakistan, South and other places in  Africa, the UK,  the US, and any other
remnant of the British Empire  or anywhere else where there are good studies
in historical archaeology in English.  Ultimately we would like to organize
the bibliography topically.  Topics might include: indigenous peoples,
colonialism, the overseas Chinese, enslavement, the African diaspora, the
Indian diaspora, the Irish diaspora, mining, cities, gender, the construction
of landscapes, etc.  But let's let  the good studies determine what the
topics will actually be.

Thanks a lot - I think that through all our efforts, we will be able to amass
a bibliography that will be helpful to all, and we may even begin to
counteract some of the accusations of parochialism that we level at ourselves
and our colleagues.

Diana Wall