You must have mellowed with old age Alasdair but then I am afraid if you
have shed your angry yoing man persona the grumpy old man phase awaits
you down the road- though basically I couldn't agree with you more. (For
Americans I was being rhetorical and humourous- these things are
sometimes taken the wrong way due to cultural differences.). I have
been an enthusiast (if sometimes critical) for Americana archaeology for
a couple of decades as is shown by my long SHA membership and it isn't
cheap for Europeans. However, always I prefer to look at the quality
and originality of the work before I ask how many and what degrees the
person has. The great attraction to me of historical archaeology has
always been its multi-disciplinarity and fiuzziness of its borders.
However, having spent 30 years acquiring them at a very basic level I
would point out that documentary research (like ceramics) requires its
own set of skills and specialist knowledge base - but there is more than
one way of gaining such skills. The more I have studied the history of
archaeology and related disciplines the more I have realized how
arbitrary many of most cherished conceptions are. An enthusiasm for ones
own discipline is not a bad thing but without a touch of humility and
respect for colleagues from different backgrounds it risks becoming the
refuge of fools.
paul
Alasdair Brooks wrote:
> " American fascist Imperialists", Paul? I don't think I ever accused
> them of being _fascists_.
>
> More seriously, (and I realise we're beginning to move away from the
> original poster's query about academic organisation at a specific
> North American institution) these differences in archaeological
> academic organisation between nations/continents, as already noted by
> Paul and Geoff, have been of some concern to me for a few years now,
> as anyone who remembers a related heated discussion on this very list
> some 7-8 years ago will already be aware.
>
> I've now worked professionally in the US, UK, and Australia (and will
> be returning to the UK in the near future), and each country has its
> own rich archaeological / historical archaeological tradition. As
> we've extensively noted, archaeology typically comes under the purview
> of anthropology in North America and New Zealand, and is typically a
> separate field broadly under the humanities in the UK, much of
> continental Europe and Australia (at my current Australian
> institution, archaeology - from early hominids through to historical
> archaeology - is in the School of Historical and European Studies).
>
> As far as I'm concerned, this is fine. I've moved between each
> region's tradition as needed, and - as Janice noted - often the
> ability to undertake professional quality archaeology supersedes these
> broad differences in disciplinary conception.
>
> What causes me concern at times is that there appears to be a minority
> in North America who, instead of accepting these rich divergent
> disciplinary traditions and histories strongly argue that archaeology
> - including historical archaeology - can only be anthropology, and
> that those of us working in countries and regions that don't have an
> anthropological tradition are essentially engaging in theoretically
> poor archaeology. I think this is ridiculous. Those of us outside
> North America are engaging in theoretically different historical
> archaeology with its own disciplinary traditions, not theoretically
> backwards archaeology, as has sometimes been argued.
>
> What particularly baffles me is that I would have thought that
> scholars with an anthropological training would have been open to the
> idea that archaeologists practicing in other countries would have
> their own historical archaeology culture that can differ from the
> archaeological culture of North America, but is no less rich or
> somehow inherently inferior for those differences.
>
> Which ultimately is a plea on my part for trans-continental
> understanding across archaeological traditions rather than a criticism
> of any one region's approach.
>
>
>
>> 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
>
>
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