I’m very much in agreement with Bob on this. In terms of research
methodology and datasets, and what cultural phenomena we do and don’t have
direct access to, the concepts of prehistoric and historic periods are
abundantly useful and fully descriptive. In the complete absence of
documentary/textual data that we can read, our direct archaeological
interpretations are based on material traces of past behaviors, from which
we then build inferences that reach beyond the material and behavioral and
into the mental realm. When that material evidence is supplemented by
documentary data, our interpretations can also draw upon textual data that
allows us direct glimpses into the mental realm of those past cultures,
though only indirectly into the behavioral and material realm that such
texts may describe. Combining the two sources of evidence, archaeological
and documentary data provide direct and simultaneous access to both the
behaviors and thoughts of members of past cultures, offering us an
opportunity for a much richer and mutually comparable interpretive
framework that is not solely reliant on material evidence.
And the concept of protohistory, as I’ve always understood it, bridges the
gap between the two, particularly in colonial situations when literate
groups interacted with non-literate groups, providing at least some textual
evidence, though typically through the lens of one alien culture writing
about another with whom they have only limited interaction and
understanding (e.g. when American Indians were not personally generating
their own texts and historical accounts, but were nonetheless being
described by European observers, which is a major emphasis of ethnohistory).
That being said, however, even in “literate” historic-period societies, a
large swath of the population either did not or could not write, or wrote
very little, which somewhat blurs the distinction between “protohistory”
and “history” as described above, since the amount and quality of
documentary evidence varies by group and region even within these
“historic” societies.
In Utah and much of North America, these periods roughly correspond to the
pre-colonial and colonial/post-colonial eras, and thus encapsulate not just
methodological and evidentiary differences, but also a number of
fundamental differences in the actual social landscape, particularly as
regards the presence and expansion of non-indigenous groups into a
previously indigenous landscape, and the concurrent transformation of the
political and economic circumstances affecting all groups. But as Bob
points out, the Maya had been generating their own documentary texts long
before Europeans arrived, and thus their “historic” period now (since
decipherment) encompasses both the late pre-colonial and the
colonial/postcolonial eras (and I consciously am avoiding conflating the
generic term “contact” with “colonialism,” since the first occurs regularly
without the latter, and the latter necessarily incorporates the former).
For the Utah situation, I’d think that both
prehistoric/protohistoric/historic and pre-colonial and
colonial/post-colonial would work, since they are rough functional
equivalents of each other. All human cultures were prehistoric at one time
or another, and all indigenous cultures were ultimately affected by
colonialism authored by Europeans or others at some point in their history,
so to single out either of these terms (history or colonial) as if they are
somehow specifically perjorative or biased against Native Americans in this
context seems very myopic in my opinion. There really is an important
methodological distinction to be made between archaeology conducted with
and without contemporaneous documentary evidence, and there really was a
substantive ontological difference between the pre-colonial and colonial
eras in North America, so we blur these lines at our own intellectual
peril.
John Worth
--
John E. Worth, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of West Florida, 11000 University Parkway, Pensacola, FL 32514
Phone: (850) 857-6204 Fax: (850) 857-6278 Email: [log in to unmask]
Home Page: *http://pages.uwf.edu/jworth/ <http://pages.uwf.edu/jworth/>*
Luna Settlement Project: http://lunasettlement.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/lunasettlementproject/
On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 2:46 PM, Schuyler, Robert L <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Steen makes a good point but it should not mislead us into thinking that
> culture history or especially cultural evolution have no impact. The
> division between prehistory and full history in North America is radical.
> Jared Diamond is probably generally correct that natives peoples of the
> Americas are off the center of the stage of world history forever after
> European invasion. However, this is relative and not true for a few regions
> in NA (e.g. the 4-corners region in the Southwest) and he is probably not
> correct when he makes the same observation for Sub-saharan Africa.
>
>
> If you are talking about how to classify archaeological sites and
> situations then Fontana's 1965 terminology is of interest:
>
>
> PROTOHISORIC - native sites with European items but before Europeans
> [or other nonaboriginal peoples] arrive in the area,
>
>
> CONTACT - native sites actually visited by Europeans [or other
> nonaboriginal peoples] but the sites already existed before the visits,
>
>
> POSTCONTACT - sites visited by Europeans [or other nonaboriginal
> peoples] that did not exist in the protohistoric or contact periods,
>
>
> FRONTIER - specialized European [or other nonaboriginal] sites that
> existed because of native peoples (e.g. forts, missions, fur trading posts),
>
>
> NONABORIGINAL - sites that involve native peoples only in a minor way
> or not at all (e.g. Gila Stage Station; Johnny Ward's Ranch).
>
>
> Bob Schuyler
>
>
> P.S. I am not sure how we would classify the home site of a certain
> current senator from Massachusetts under this system.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Robert L. Schuyler
> University of Pennsylvania Museum
> 3260 South Street
> Philadelphia, PA l9l04-6324
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of
> Carl Steen <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2018 1:35 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Protohistory on the Utah site form
>
> I have to agree Jim. Here in SC it is common practice to divide time and
> culture into Paleo, Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian and Historic, and
> to give a specific date for the beginning and end of each "period,"
> ignoring cultural differences that can persist for hundreds of years.
> (Did everyone practicing Late Woodland lifeways really up and leave when
> the Mississippian Period began about 1000BP? If so, where'd they go?).
> That is one reason I suggested avoiding bias by using time periods.
>
>
> On 3/22/2018 1:25 PM, Jim Gibb wrote:
> > Yea, Scott: I have to take exception to your suggestion. I've been using
> Maryland's state site files for several research projects lately and can
> confirm that how these data are structured constrains research. This isn't
> about being politically correct.
> > The state had a permanent exhibit in which prehistory was on one side of
> the room and history on the other side of the passageway that divided the
> room. In the passageway they had a glass case with 'Contact' material in a
> laudable, but unsuccessful attempt to bridge the divide. One of the
> implicit statements taken away from the exhibit is that Indians were here,
> but they disappeared during the early years of European colonization, never
> to return. Since then, Maryland has granted recognition to several
> indigenous groups, a result of petitioning and lobbying, not of exhibit
> design.
> > It is a given in anthropology that the words we use structure our views
> of the world. Site forms are so basic to structuring the views of
> generations of archaeologists, they should be periodically critiqued and
> revised.
> > Jim
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Jim Gibb
> > Gibb Archaeological Consulting
> > Annapolis, MD
> > [log in to unmask]
> > 410.693.3847
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Speal, Charles S <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: HISTARCH <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Thu, Mar 22, 2018 12:57 pm
> > Subject: Re: Protohistory on the Utah site form
> >
> > On the other hand, if all you are doing is modernizing the State site
> form, it's probably not necessary to navel-gaze yourself into oblivion. At
> the end of the day what I imagine you are looking for is an effective check
> box that adequately classifies a newly identified resource on the basis of
> what may be a minimal amount of available diagnostic information--without
> being blatantly offensive.
> >
> > You can probably leave the bulk of the pc term-chasing to those
> publishing their grand inferences.
> >
> > Scott S.
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Hannah Russell
> > Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2018 9:37 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Protohistory on the Utah site form
> >
> > Good Morning HistArch community,
> >
> > Over the past year in Utah, we have been working with a new site form
> (see link below). One of the new features on the site form is a new site
> class. The state has added "Protohistoric" to "Prehistoric" and
> "Historic". For a lot of reasons, this addition is pretty exciting, the
> state has acknowledged on the site form the false duality of "prehistory"
> > and "history". That's an awesome step towards better inclusivity in the
> archaeological record, and a more holistic way to talk about the historical
> > experiences of Indigenous peoples! As the site form and manual are
> > written however, the use of the word is incorrect. The manual defines
> prehistoric as Native American sites prior to 1800, Protohistoric as
> 1800-1900, and historic as non-native groups after 1800.
> >
> > These time frames, and the use of protohistry can and should be improved
> on our new form. At the consultants meetings for the last two years, we've
> been told that there is room to make changes on the form. I've brought
> this issue up at both of those meetings and have been told that the task
> force to create and improve the site form haven't found a better
> alternative word to protohistory.
> >
> > I've been invited to the next site form task force meeting to discuss
> this issue further, and I'd like to workshop some ideas with the histarch
> group. Personally, when I write and talk about the early and sustained
> interactions between Indigenous and Euro-Americans in the archaeological
> record, I use multiple terms together including protohistory, contact, and
> historical Indigenous. When talking about this issue with a friend, she
> suggested contact period as an alternative to protohistory. Does anyone
> have any other suggestions? Or for that matter suggested reading?
> >
> > https://heritage.utah.gov/history/archaeology-site-form-release
> >
> > Thanks so much for your time,
> >
> > --
> > Hannah Russell, RPA
> > Cottonwood Archaeology, LLC
> > [log in to unmask]
> > (435) 210-0414
> >
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