I am not a great believer in the concept of modernity- it has been used 
for every century since the 10th at least by someone. However, there are 
major changes not least the impact of the Black Death, Reformation and 
Counter Reformation, and  a war in the early 17th century which killed a 
third of the population over much of Germany.  There also major changes 
in the archaeological record- urban build-up and cess pit building etc 
depending where you are. In decades of excavation and post-ex I can't 
think of a single 15th century context - well not one I could separate 
from the 16th century any way.  Yes there is no exact point- I think  I 
wrote much quoted paper on this in the 1990s SPMA Age of Transition 
volume but that is not to say we should abandon periods just because we 
can't define them exactly. Being a medievalist and a post-medievalist 
one important point of separation is that I can read medieval and c16 
documents in Latin without relying on a tame historian often with no 
concept of landscape, space or material culture. I don't expect every 
archaeologist to be able to do that anymore than i would all 
archaeologists to be excavators (done that too and now too rheumatic).  
The fact is we have to specialise to get above a certain level of 
understanding. On site you have to be capable of digging and recording 
anything though few people are as adept at interpreting the Roman as 
they are the medieval never mind post-medieval. The cut off points are 
often arbitrary but I believe period knowledge is important and I see in 
the UK increasing numbers of well excavated and presented sites ruined 
by interpretive chapters that read like bad undergraduate essays. No one 
reads anymore- clearly.  if I remember correctly Geoff- you have a 
specialism in stratigraphy and recording and its evolution - well any 
specialism is a good thing if only to remind us how ignorant we are of 
the subject as a whole.

To badly paraphrase Ranke - There are periods and though they are all 
equal in the eyes of God we are only human.


paul


On 14/12/2010 20:35, geoff carver wrote:
> Are you now going to decide who is or who is not an historical
> archaeologist? Here in Germany I'm told I'm not an archaeologist because my
> training did not include Latin. I tell many of my colleagues they're not
> archaeologists because they can't use a theodolite, write a soil description
> or draw a Harris Matrix. I'm an historical archaeologist when I work in
> urban contexts, which can and do date from WW2 to Roman cellars, all within
> a single site. Am I supposed to excavate part of the site to some random
> cut-off date of 1492 that has absolutely no relevance here, then give the
> excavation over to someone else to do the earlier bits?
> The definition you put over is an American definition. Period. Sorry. Here
> there is no qualitative change after 1400. If "The Modern Period is set off
> qualitatively from the rest of human history and prehistory," what is the
> defining factor? Moveable type? The Protestant Reformation? The Viking
> voyages to the New World? Marco Polo? Columbus?
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> The definition I put forth is not an "American"
> definition. It is a definition based on cultural evolution which is
> global. Post-Medieval Archaeology is an integral part of our
> specialization, for example, but Etruscan archaeology is not.
>