Mail*LinkŪ SMTP Historians & Archaeologists ...and Geographers
I have been thinking about this issue for many years and I wonder whether the actually problem is that we see ourselves as historical achaeologists doing our thing called historical archaeology while historians are off doing history when in fact what we are doing is studying the past by different methods. This common goal should act to unite whereas the title historical archaeologist or historian serves to devide along party lines. I think this system is inherented from the Universities and their feuds and reproduced by the way the heritage industry deals with heritage.
I also wonder whether the Annales historians really did write total histories in the way that they said they did. I can't remember much archaeology in Braudel.
To take another tack in the debate it is interesting that history and historical archaeology is a regular debate on this list (and elsewhere) but what about historical archaeology and cultural and historical geography? The traditional relationship between archaeology and geography seems to had gone and neither area seems to be particualrlly interested in each other. For example look at the work of Mark Leonie and Denis Cosgrove which move in the same overall research direction but it seems that neither is aware of each others work.
Perhaps the dream of inter-disciplinary work is a fadeing child of the 60's
Iain Stuart
University of Sydney
