Some universities do offer programs intended to do more local historical
research. I had the good fortune to be able to take a "public history"
minor as an undergrad, it was aimed at training local historians and
museum professionals and had a sequence of practical doing local history
classes.
Of course, there was an absolute line between the history department and
the anthropology department, complete with advising students not to take
classes in the other department. A memorable quote from the then-history
department chair: "How do you tell the difference between historians and
archaeologists? Historians are well-dressed people with jobs,
archaeologists are scruffy people who look like they've just crawled out
from under a rock (and they probably have)."
I understand the situation there is much friendlier now.
Carol
--
Carol A. Nickolai
Anthropology
University of Pennsylvania
email: [log in to unmask]
Ned Heite wrote:
>
> Yes, as Dan remarked, we have been through this thread before. So
> should the archaeologist students take more history courses? I
> seriously doubt it would do much good. Yes, there are some damn good
> historians in college history departments.
>
> But most college history departments of my acquaintance are populated
> largely by history teachers, not historians.
>
> University history is a field where a student's success generally is
> measured by the prestige of the institution where he obtains a
> tenure-track position. Any other career track is failure, period. The
> whole structure of academic history departments is geared to
> producing the next generation of academic history departments.
>
> In such a mind-set, there is no need to do deed research, but more
> importantly, there is no place for relating particular site-specific
> information to the broader themes of history. In our everyday work,
> we typically see evidence of larger themes, or at least we are
> supposed to see them.
>
> If we are digging a twentieth-century dairy, for example, we should
> see evidence of changed sanitary practices resulting from better
> comprehension of germ theory. A sudden increase in oyster cans has
> been interpreted to indicate the opening of a railroad to the site
> vicinity, because oysters were a delicacy unavailable before the
> railroad arrived. The size of tin cans is a direct product of the
> size of tinplate sheets from which they are cut; changes in can size
> may reflect changes in the tinplate supply.
>
> The connections go on and on and on, but too many archaeologists
> remain blissfully ignorant of anything outside the soil profile of
> the hole where they happen to be digging.
>
> A young archaeological student once asked me about the qualifications
> of a colleague. "What's her specialty?" I answered, "Urban
> historical geography." The youngster looked at me blankly, "What's
> that got to do with archaeology?" I just gave up, mumbled
> "everything" and changed the subject.
>
> So the kids coming out of the anthropology departments haven't a clue
> about history and the kids coming out of the history departments are
> no better off.
>
>
> --
> [log in to unmask]
>
> A sure sign you're over the hill is when you catch yourself referring
> to your "dress" Birkenstocks!
>
|