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).