I'm in an unusual position for a historical archaeologist, but one that I think provides a pretty good perspective for addressing your question. My undergraduate and Master's educations were focused on historical archaeology, but after finishing my Master's degree at the University of Maryland I entered the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History (DPAH) at the University of Michigan.  This program is connected to but administratively separate from both the Anthropology and History departments (so I am considered neither an Anthro nor a History student), and when I finish I will have a dual Ph.D.  How I got in, I'm still not sure; since matriculating, I've been the only archaeologist in DPAH, and before me there had been only one other since the program was founded in the mid-1980s.  Essentially, when people associated with DPAH say "Anthropology," what they really mean is ethnography.  Furthermore, there are no other historical archaeologists at Michigan (i.e., archaeologists who study the post-1492 world; there are some who study other historical periods, such as ancient Mesopotamia or India).

Nevertheless, I was accepted and I've had a fabulous time here.  But, that doesn't mean that everyone has accepted me as an archaeologist.  While the other students in my cohort and those who entered immediately before and after have been supportive, only two of them have ever had any direct experience with archaeology themselves.  Furthermore, the faculty who are most heavily involved in the program never quite seemed comfortable when I brought archaeology up in classroom discussions.

I've taken a mix of ethnology, archaeology and history courses here at Michigan, and interacted in various other ways with people from all three disciplines.  After five years here, I can say this about academic historians: they really don't give a damn about archaeology.  (Sure, there are a few exceptions, but really they are the exception to the rule.  And keep in mind, I am only speaking of academic historians--I've never worked for longer than a week in CRM, so I wouldn't know what historians in that field of practice are like.)  For one, academic historians don't really know what archaeology is and how we go about doing what we do.  Like most of the general population, they usually associate archaeology with far-off places and ancient cultures, so American historians in particular are really not aware that historical archaeology is a viable field of its own.  Second, the stereotype is true: most academic historians really do believe that anything worth knowing about the past can be found in written documents.  Material culture might be interesting, but it's not important.  Third, academic historians generally disdain theory of any kind.  So while I am fully conversant with all kinds of theorists from Binford to Hodder to Foucault and Derrida, if I bring any of this up in a history class I get blank stares (in the case of archaeological theory) or icy stares (in the case of postmodern social theory).

Even within my own program, where other students have been supportive of my archaeological work, there is a general feeling that "archaeology is not what we do."  For instance, DPAH organizes a monthly Anthropology and History workshop where someone shares a paper in progress.  The paper is distributed and read in advance, so the workshop is given over entirely to discussion.  About half the time we invite scholars from outside the university to present at these workshops.  This year I convinced the workshop committee to invite a prominent archaeologist whose work intersects in many interesting ways with the subjects that dominate DPAH's intellectual identity.  Somehow, even though I'm not on the workshop committee, I (the only archaeologist in DPAH, remember) was assigned the task of actually inviting the archaeologist in question and then handling most of the liaising duties during the three-month period between her acceptance of the invitation and her arrival on campus.  While the students-only lunch with this archaeologist before the workshop went very well, once the workshop started the discussion was painfully slow to really get any momentum going.  After all, "archaeology is not what we do."  (Never mind the fact that the paper this archaeologist presented did not discuss any actual archaeological excavation or analysis, but rather the dynamics of historical erasure in a "natural" park in Africa.)

Is there any way to change this dynamic wherein historical archaeologists are ignored by academic historians (and many ethnographers as well)?  I wish I knew.  I've managed to cobble together a good dissertation committee (DPAH requires that I have at least one person from each department), but it was tough and individual committee members have taken responsibility for parts of the dissertation rather than the whole.  Part of the problem, I think, is a disconnect in how we think about historical research.  When archaeologists think about historical research, we are thinking about something altogether different from what academic historians are thinking about (in terms of kinds of sources, kinds of data, what can be done with that data, the kinds of conclusions we can reach, etc.)  No matter how much we insist that we do archival research too, we are simply not historians in the academic sense, and they (academic historians) know it.  A good illustration of this is my experience on the job market this year: I will have a dual Ph.D. when I finish this summer, so I've been applying for both History and Anthropology faculty jobs.  Due to the fact that there are many more history departments, and history departments also tend to be larger than anthro departments, a significant majority of the jobs I've applied to have been history jobs.  Yet, while I've had some interest from anthro departments, not a single history department has even asked me for more information, much less a lousy 20-minute phone or conference interview.

Secondly, I think that we as archaeologists need to totally rethink our approach to interdisciplinary outreach.  We are constantly trying to defend what we do as important, as filling some gap in historical knowledge that no one else can investigate.  One of the most common refrains I've heard and read is that historical archaeology can investigate the lives of "people without history," people who didn't leave any written records behind and therefore supposedly are invisible in the historical record (and, consequently, are ignored by historians).  This is bullshit.  Historians can perfectly well investigate the lives of so-called "people without history," as they've been demonstrating for over 30 years now.  Historians have written plenty of books examining the lives of plantation slaves, for instance--many of them from the perspective of the slaves themselves, no less.  Recently one historian wrote a book that examined life inside the antebellum slave market, equally from the perspectives of the slaves, the slave traders, and slave owners/purchasers.  (There are many other examples I could mention, but this email is too long already.  For an incisive and damning critique of this justification of historical archaeology, see John Moreland, "Archaeology and Text," chapter 5 [Duckworth, 2001].)  In short, any archaeologist who claims that history based on documents can only reveal the past from an elite perspective is either lying or has never read a single book written by an academic historian since 1980.  So why should historians take us seriously when we constantly claim that we can do something they can't, when they know perfectly well that they can?

I wish I could offer some concrete suggestions as to how to change this state of affairs, but even after five years of having one foot in each world I still don't know how to bring academic historians and archaeologists (and ethnographers, for that matter) together productively.  Obviously, I hope that my dissertation goes some way toward demonstrating how history and archaeology can be theoretically and practically combined, but I'm well aware that most academic historians will think that it is anthropology, not history, and that archaeologists will think that it's mostly history, not archaeology.  Sigh.

Apologies for the extremely long post.  I hope this thread continues, and I'm also perfectly happy to discuss any of the issues raised here in more detail off list.

Cheers,
Bob

>>> Jason Schmerer <[log in to unmask]> 03/06/09 5:09 PM >>>
I am not sure if this is for this list(s) or not but here goes anything.

I have been doing quite a bit of research lately about the Spanish period in
East Florida and the colonial period archaeology and in history books for
the NE FL and SE GA area.  I am though a archaeologist at heart and will
forever be.  It seems that history and archaeology can go hand in hand but
to no avail, so it seems in academia, that historians and archeologist do
not like one another.  Lately it seems that history and archaeology are
coming together and feeding off one another which is something that we as
archaeologists and historians must do to continue our research, right?  If I
am wrong then what will happen to the all the artifacts.  Archaeologist dig
up the artifacts, sorry for saying that in a terrible way, but it is true
and historians work on the written record, right, and help the archaeologist
interpret the dug up artifacts?  So what is wrong with academia coming
together, as in the CRM field where archaeologist and historians work hand
in hand.  I would gladly work with a historian and I am planning on getting
a MA in History soon and a PhD in Archaeology, with all do hope.  I see in
academia just by reading the posts and talking with people that the new
archaeologist and historians are coming together as a team to work on a site
or historical research topic of interest.  Would it not be fascinating to
find a archaeologist and historian to work together to find a great site of
interest, for instance Fort Caroline.

On another note what about forming a new new sub-field of archaeology or
history that deals with just this issue of blurring the lines between
history, archaeology or even add in sociology and cultural anthropology.
Why cannot we have a system that brings these fields/sub-fields together
and, again forms a new history or archaeology of the 21st Century?  If there
is a academic system that this exists in let me know.

If I am wrong and maybe a lot naive in my comments that archaeologists and
historians do not work together, especially in academia, please let me
know.  I fully admit and could very well be wrong in all of this.

I will look forward to the comments.

Jason Schmerer