Iain,

Good to have the take on things from Oz.  Truth is, there is only one
Department of Archaeology in the United States.  It is at Boston
University.  I count myself exceedingly lucky to be part of it, for many
reasons.  One is that I have had utter freedom to be an anthropologist but
to talk to and listen to and even collaborate with all sorts of other
archaeologists (most Americans have a narrow notion that all archaeologists
are trained as anthropologists, which in fact is far from the case unless
one just wants to be parochial about it) who trained as Classicists, Near
Eastern or Eygyptian archaeologists (vs. Egyptologists but still meaning
people who do archaeology in Egypt not Egyptians necessarily), etc.,  as
well as the anthros in the anthro dept., historians, American Studies folk
(this includes literature and material culture types), preservationists,
architectural and art historians, cultural geographers, etc., etc., etc.  In
my graduate training I was discouraged from taking courses outside of the
anthro dept. even though I did stray over to History and American Studies
when I could.  I keep wondering what good all those esoteric courses in
kinship systems are doing for me now (probably more than I realize) when I
should have had more of an opportunity at Brown to actually get some
fieldwork experience.  That, along with learning historical research
methods, etc., I had to do on my own.  Nothing wrong with that, it's just
that it is difficult under almost any regime to provide the perfect training
for historical archaeologists.  Initiative and imagination are what I see as
serving most of the current generation of historical archaeologists very
well.

Whose work seems to me to be contributing to important insights into
American (and African-American) and other CULTURAL histories and beyond.
I'm pretty excited about much of the work that is coming out these days and
have nothing but praise for all those working on elucidating everyday lives
of working people and others not normally deemed relevant in mainstream
macro- or microhistory.  Historical archaeology is a wicked hybrid field and
is producing some truly exciting outcomes.

There is a huge advantage in opening things up vs. walling them in.

Mary B.


-- 
Mary C. Beaudry, PhD, RPA, FSA
Professor of Archaeology & Anthropology
Department of Archaeology
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215-1406
tel. 617-358-1650