I have trained in both archaeology and history with a bit of 
environmental sciences, historical anthroplogy and geography thrown in. 
I am still amazed at the miscomprehension of every discipline for every 
other one but I am worried by people who think there own is not full of 
its own biases.  Some disciplinary differences are based in practice 
such as archaeologists (excavators) unlike historians have a tendency of 
destroying their primary evidence. Some of the differences are to do 
with professionalisation ie boundary and career maintenance.  Academics 
are amazingly bad at applying the same critical eye at themselves as 
they do to their subject areas.

US archaeology is anthropology based but Europeans (as geoff points out) 
mostly come from different traditions and tend to think 'American 
fascist Imperialists and that's just the printable words' if told they 
should be otherwise by Americans.


paul

geoff carver wrote:
> in the US, maybe; here in germany they'll tell you that archaeology is 
> rooted in winckelmann's "art history" (so archaeology is classed as a 
> "humanities" subject) and point out that there is no comparable 
> discipline of "anthropology": "anthropologie" is physical 
> anthropology, sometimes US-anthropology is translated as "cultural 
> anthropology," but i don't think it's taught at any universities here, 
> and it's certainly not the parent-discipline
>
> ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 1:34 PM
> Subject: Re: An academic-type question
>
>
> archaeology, which
> in turn is rooted in anthropology.