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.


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