HISTARCH Members:
I was going to ask a question about course books when Ann beat me to the
punch. However, the course involved is different. Every few years I
teach a basic course on Historical Archaeology aimed at graduate
students and rare undergraduates going into the discipline. In the first
part of the class I cover the history of the field and use:
(1) Andres Andren (1997) BETWEEN
ARTIFACTS AND TEXTS: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
(2) Robert L. Schuyler ((1978)
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: A GUIDE TO SUBSTANTIVE AND THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
(3) Stanley South (1994) PIONEERS IN
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY; BREAKING NEW GROUND
I also may use a biographical work such as Roberts and Orr's 2008 book
on John Cotter, or S. South autobiography, or Ivor Noel Hume's recent
autobiography.
Some of the books are out of print but I have collected copies that I
loan to students. My own source book is still in print.
The next and bigger part of the class involves a jump to the most recent
literature, especially general, synthesizing works, either edited or
single author. Last time I used Hall and Silliman's 2006 Historical
Archaeology and also Hicks and Beaudry's 2006 The Cambridge Companion to
Historical Archaeology. We also used Leone's book on Annapolis.
Here is my question:
What do you think are the most important general, synthesizing
books on Historical Archaeology issued between:
ca. 2009 - 2014?
Also of interest would be more specific books (site reports,
artifact books) - but this is secondary - that might become classics in
our field.
thanks,
Robert L. Schuyler
On 10/16/2014 10:47 AM, Anna Agbe-Davies wrote:
> Hello HistArchers,
>
> I'm building a new course (undergrad historical archaeology) for next
> year and I thought this might make an interesting topic for
> conversation, so after consulting the syllabi on the SHA webpage, I'm
> wondering:
>
> What is the one book (besides In Small Things Forgotten--which is pretty
> much ubiquitous) that you like best for teaching an undergraduate course
> in historical archaeology? And, even more crucially, why?
>
> I'll go first. For me, there's no book like Uncommon Ground for the
> clarity and unfussiness of the writing, the balance between text and
> artifact data in the argument, and the clear social message of the
> entire project.
>
> (Then again, I use it every year for another class, so I'm going to
> resist my impulse to include it on this syllabus, too!)
>
> Happy Thursday, all,
>
> Anna
>
--
Robert L. Schuyler
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA l9l04-6324
Tel: (215) 898-6965
Fax: (215) 898-0657
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