I send Bob and Jason's postings to a colleague in the UK, John Carman, and 
he had a useful reply, posted below on his behalf.

carol (mcdavid)
*********************************

Dear Jason and Bob
Thank you for your interesting exchange, which a colleague has copied me 
into.
Things may be about to change for the better. Here in the UK the focus is 
shifting towards 'transdisciplines' (horrible word!) which do not operate by 
breaking down disciplinary barriers (as good old interdisciplinary studies 
did) but by bypassing them altogether to create new field of enquiry. 
'Heritage Studies' (if you believe in it) may be one;  'neuro-economics' is 
another. Rather than attempting common approaches to a research question, 
transdisciplines (if I understand them right, and I may not!) identify a 
common object of research ('the heritage'; or 'happpiness' or 'welfare') and 
attempt to study it by bringing to bear the different styles and insights 
deriving from established but different disciplines. The result is something 
new.
I think what your discussion points up is the reaction to such changes of 
disciplines that feel under threat: archaeology from history encroaching 
upon its territory; history from archaeology encroaching upon its; 
anthropology ditto; and so on. In fact, history can benefit mightily from 
the insights of anthropology, and the reverse; depending on whether you see 
archaeology as more closely tied to anthropology (as in the USA) or history 
(as generally in Europe), the threats will be perceived differently.
One phrase in particular did strike me as intriguing: did Jason mean "a new 
history or archaeology *of* the 21st Century" or "a new history or 
archaeology *for* the 21st Century"? They aren't the same. A 
history/archaeology *of* the 21st century already exists over here -- see 
the work of e.g. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, Paul Graves-Brown, John 
Schofield, and others of the CHAT network who study archaeologies of the 
present day and very recent past. An archaeology *for* the 21st century 
would of course merely be old wine in new bottles. If Jason is looking for 
the former maybe he should study over here! Just a thought!
Best regards
John Carman

Dr John Carman
Birmingham University Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Heritage 
Valuation
Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity
Arts Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham B15 2TT
Tel: +44 (0)121 414 7493
Fax: +44 (0)121 414 3595
Email: [log in to unmask]



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Chidester" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: History and Archaeology Blurring the lines


> 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., archaeol!
> ogists 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 experie!
> nce 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 t!
> he 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