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Date: | Thu, 10 May 2012 18:10:41 +0100 |
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Hi folks
Matters are complicated in Europe by differing useages. In most of the
Continent historical archaeology means everything from the late Iron Age
onwards and some would throw in the study of the ancient literate
civilizations as those of you have read Anders Andren's book will know.
As someone who is both a historian and an archaeologist of the last
millenium I feel no more in common with a Romanist or Egyptologist than
I do with a prehistorian often less so. In the UK the younger generation
prefers historical archaeology to post-medieval as they wish to align
with their US colleagues and quite frankly they think it sounds sexier.
Things are also complicated by the fact that many European
post-medievalists like myself are also late medievalists. While
post-medieval may be seen as imprecise especially in regard to where it
ends (yesterday is fine by me though I prefer the earlier end) - it also
applies to historical archaeology in a European setting as we have over
2000 years of historical sources. If it is a methodological definition
- as someone who spent 35 years making up for my early science
background by learning history as a second discipline - I can say most
practitioners know very little history and couldn't read a word in your
average 16th century manuscript document or know the difference between
a Menonite and an Anabaptist so methodologically confusing as well. My
own preference is for retaining post-medieval as I see it as period
discipline, its what the founders of our discipline chose (most of whom
I met having joined SPMA as a 17 year old and pushed forward the subject
without academic salaries, travel grants etc) and is close to our
Continental colleagues useage - archaeology of temps modernes in France
and neuzeit in Germany but no doubt most will see me as an old fogey
(hope that translates into US).
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