Mornin' Ron --
Yes. In the CRM arena these are the types I often encounter, and that forms
the basis for any biases that I may have. But, I guess one does have to pay
the rent.
However, I have worked directly with Don Hardesty and his students, and
graduates form the program at Michigan Tech, and those are the folks who I
consider to be the real HAs because they have the interdisciplinary
backgrounds in History and HA that I think makes them uniquely qualified to
do HA.
Note, too, that I say INTERDISCIPLINARY and not multidisciplinary, as there
is a world of difference between the two, IMHO. A multidisciplinary
approach is when you throw carrots, meat, barley, etc. into a pot to make
a stew but never stir it. One gets servings of the components, but not the
enjoyable flavor of stew. This is like some CRM reports I've read where
the Historian writes chapters 2 and 5, the arch writes chapters 1, 6, and
9, the architect writes chapter 3, but no one puts the whole together to
make some useful contribution to scholarship and understanding, whether in
History or any other field. If a report tells me, well, we found six
butttons, two cracked teacups, and ten nails, and here's the map of where
we found them my response is "so what?"
These are same people who simplistically think that once you learn who to
find some old book in the card catalog that you can plagiarize from (some
call that learning how to do historical research), you've become a
historian. Anybody can learn to use a card catalog - that is not
historical research, and doing the historiography of a site does not equate
to doing a chain of title or deed search. The real historian is someone who
has the depth and breadth of understanding of a theme, era, or process like
mining or shipbuilding that comes only from years of study to make sense of
what's in that old book, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to know
enough to determine if that old book is even trustworthy.
That is the kind of historical knowledge and training that I think real HA
should be based on, not some occasional reading of a chapter or two out of
a monograph just to find a name or a date, and then to say that you've done
the historical research.
O, well - I'm gettin' old and cranky!
Cheerio!
CB
Ron May
<[log in to unmask]
> To
Sent by: [log in to unmask]
HISTORICAL cc
ARCHAEOLOGY
<[log in to unmask] Subject
> Re: An academic-type question
07/18/2007 03:13
AM
Please respond to
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
<[log in to unmask]
>
In a message dated 7/17/2007 1:45:29 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
However, Ron O'l Chap, I do share and heartily second your views that HA
should be an interdisciplinary field where the two disciplines are really
melded. I see very little of that, and I don't see how it can happen in
the one-dimensional approach the current training and practice in HA
takes.
Yo, ho.
Carl,
I think you confuse prehistoric archaeologists (anthropology trained)
playing at historical archaeology for contract money. When they cannot
find
teaching jobs, most find engineering firms that do not know the difference
between
an ethnologist or a biological anthropologist from a prehistorian, let
alone a
trained historical archaeologist. And few of either know much about
conservation and collections management.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.
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