Iain Stuart wrote:
> Mail*LinkŪ SMTP Historians and hisorical archaeology
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> The situation in Australia at a general level is pretty much the same the historians largely ignore archaelogy to consentrate on their post-modern histories of of leather jackets in the 1950's or some such. When they turn their gaze to historical archaeology they are distainfull or jealous (especially when they find out the cost of excavations). And guess what many historical archaeogists panic! "Oh the historians don't like us" they mone and run around trying to show historians how usefull we can be.
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> My view is if historians are not interested in historical archaeolgy that is their loss not ours.
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> What is more interesting in Australia is the tradition of close work between historians and archaeologists that started when historical archaeology emerged at the University of Sydney and continues with historians working on urban archaeology in Sydney and Melbourne and in projects such as the Southern Australain (and New Zealand) whaling projects. In these cases researchers seem to be less concerned with what discipline they are following than with understanding the problem at hand.
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> There is also a tradition in the UK littrature of studying the past be using a combination of documentary research and archaeological techniquest such as field walking and landscape invesitigation. Hoskin's Making of the English Landscape is only one example of this approach. I am just reading Maurice Beresford's History on the Ground about "lost" villages and landscapes. For a professor of Economic History he is a good historical archaeologist (although the Poms will deny this). This approach seems to be the most effective way of using history and archaeology combined to study the past.
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> Iain Stuart
> University of Sydney
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Dan Mouer
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
Virginia Commonwealth University
http://saturn.vcu.edu/~dmouer/homepage.htm
