What HISTARCH, the list is, is what Anita and contributors make it.
What historical archaeology is may also be subject to negotiation,
but such negotiation takes on the more entrenched trappings of
"disciplinization" which includeds high-level academic politics, etc.
 
Those who protest that historical archaeology should not be limited
to European colonization of the New World are overlooking the fact
that historical archaeology has, for some time, included much
research in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, etc.
 
To define the field, as many do, as the interplay between history and
archaeology is to open the field up so wide as to lose it entirely.
Historical archaeology, by these lights, would include damn near any
archaeology from the Old World from the Bronze Age on, including all
of Classical Studies.
 
The topic should have some defining limitations, and in reality,
those can usually be subsumed by defining the field loosely as "The
archaeology of the modern world." Or similar. Geography becomes
unlimited, but there are clearly some lower-end teporal boundaries.
Now, where to draw them is open to discussion. An archaeologist
digging 19th-c Chinese mining camps in Nevada may not give a fig for
late Medieval Europe, but those working on 16th and 17th-century
sites back East may find that all quite relevant and familiar.
 
I just don't want to see someone trained in Roman archaeology being
"certified" to do work on an 18th-c plantation, or to review MY work
on an 18th-c plantation, or to land a job for an historical
archaeologist at BIG U.
 
As for Bill Adams's objections, this isn't
historical-archaeology-the-discipline, this is HISTARCH-the-list. We
can be more inclusive in our conversation and learn much from
colleagues working in other fields.
 
Dan Mouer
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