Dear HISTARCHers, 
I'm just back from England, visiting dear old mum, where I came across an
excellent new book:

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: BACK FROM THE EDGE (Funari, Hall, and Jones,
editors)
Routledge, One World Archaeology series  No 31, 1999. ISBN 0-415-11787-9.

Apart from the price (90 pounds -- gevault!) this was a great find and I
heartily recommend it. Articles by folks from England, Brazil, Oztralia,
Zimbabwe... even the USA. I've only had time to read some of the shorter
articles (Sian Jones' on-going adventures in ethnicity, Richard Hingley on
the archaeology of social control in Roman Britain, and the editors'
introductory essay in which they discuss the field in global context) but I
found them all mind-expanding. I've always suspected that the best
definition of historical archaeology is that it is what historical
archaeologists do, and the editors appear to go along with the idea.

How about this from Matthew Johnson:

"One of the key themes that does hold historical archaeology together is
that we walk in a uniquely dangerous space of the human past, a space
between often  very powerful 'master narratives' of cultural and social
identity and much smaller stranger, and potentially subversive narratives
of archaeological material. Archaeology does not have a monopoly on the
study of voices of ordinary people, but it does for the ability to render
familiar things strange, and reveal timeless things as transient."

Well said, Matthew.  Now, if only they'd issue it in paperback...

Adrian Praetzellis
Sonoma State University
California, USA