My tuppence / two cents worth....

We're at the risk of conflating several different discussions within a single debate thread, but my thoughts on some of the main themes:


1) Anita, as list owner, is perfectly within her rights to choose which threads are appropriate to HISTARCH, and how the term 'historical archaeology' is defined.  Over the 14 or so years I've been a member of this list, her interventions have been infrequent and light-handed.  She does a fantastic job providing an excellent service to the historical archaeology community, and her efforts on our behalf have been rightly recognised with an SHA award of merit.

2) You probably could introduce a discussion that made Marco Polo relevant to historical archaeology under the post-1400 modern world definition if it were to approach the issue from an 'age of transition' angle via a discussion on the comparative archaeology of late 13th-century European proto-exploration with 15th-century European exploration and expansion.  However, that wasn't what happened here.  The original poster made a perfectly innocent enquiry about the historical figure Marco Polo (1254-1324) and under Anita's definition of historical archaeology - and, again, she's the list owner - it wasn't directly germane to the list.

3) However, as debate here has shown, the term 'historical archaeology' is more emotive and malleable than some people credit.  I would posit that - outside the United States, at least - there's increasingly a potential disconnect between 'historical archaeology' as a term and the archaeology of the post-1400 modern world as a discipline.  Stated more clearly, it's perfectly possible to agree with Bob Schuyler that there is a definable archaeology of the modern world - which is what this discussion list is for - even while disagreeing over what types of archaeology the term 'historical archaeology' should be applied to.   This is an inevitable consquence of 'history' pre-dating 1400 in the majority of the world, though American/Australian usage of the term 'historical archaeology' is increasingly the most recognised internationally, even where 'history' and 'historical archaeology' don't necessarily coincide.

4) On that theme, I respectfully disagree with those American colleagues who've been stating that we define  'historical archaeology' on this side of the pond solely in the maximist sense as all archaeology from the arrival of the Romans (presumably earlier in some other parts of the 'Old World') onwards.  In Britain at least you'll find that different academic departments define the term differently, and that we're in the middle of a vibrant debate over disciplinary terminology.  Some departments, like York and Glasgow, are indeed inclined to define 'historical archaeology' as the archaeology of the last 2000 years, while others, like Leicester and Bristol, are inclined to use the 'American' definition by restricting it to the post-medieval period.  Leicester (and, truth in advertising, I take up a position as a teaching fellow in historical archaeology at Leicester this next month) even has a Centre for Historical Archaeology within the Department of Archaeology and Ancient
  History where 'historical archaeology' is largely defined in the American and Australian sense of the word from a period perspective even while the theoretical and methodological approaches of a British historical archaeology may inevitably differ.

5) Writing now as the SHA Newsletter Editor, when it comes to the current research section of the Newsletter, I would be willing to accept news submissions that stretch the traditional American / Australian definition of historical archaeology on an ad hoc basis where I thought it was relevant.  For example, I might accept a news story on Norse colonialism in Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland if I thought this was of interest to colleagues studying later European colonialism.  I might accept (in fact, did accept) a news story on the early expansion of Nestorian Christianity into China through 'Western' traders or the preservation of Silk Road historic sites where I thought A) the first story had relevance to later European expansion and/or B) the second story included sites from across archaeological and historical periods.  That there might be a definable archaeology of the modern world doesn't mean that earlier sites aren't of academic or comparative interest, especially
  when trying to understand the roots of later European colonial and/or capitalist expansion.  We funny Europeans didn't just invent those concepts overnight, you know.  Were the Crusades the last Germanic barbarian invasion, or the first stirrings of Western European overseas colonial expansion?  What similarities might exist between Edward I's 'English' towns outside his Welsh castles and later English/British colonial settlements?  To what extent do the roots of European capitalist expansion lie in the practices of the great Italian trading Empires such as Venice, Pisa and Genoa?  So long as the necessary connections were to be explicitly drawn to make them relevant to the archaeology of the later modern world, these would all, to my mind, be legitimate research queries that I'd consider for the Newsletter.

6) I don't really think it's revealing anything I shouldn't when I note that in our strategic planning discussions during the January conference board meetings, the SHA board agreed (though not unanimously) not to define the term 'historical archaeology'.  Non-definition won out in a vote over limiting the term specifically to the archaeology of the modern world at least partially because of some of the above points.

7) But none of that changes the fact that this is Anita's list, that she can define historical archaeology as she sees fit for discussion in this list, that her definition is a widely accepted one that most of us would recognise (even when recognition and agreement don't entirely coincide), and that she's perfectly within her rights to limit discussion to that definition whenever she wants to.


Alasdair Brooks