This is a very interesting issue that I have been struggling with for some
time.  I beleive that we (anthropological and Historical archaeologists)
need to work on making our findings of interest to a larger audience.  In
this, I include both the "public" and "academic" sectors.  As many of you
know, this is one of the major issues that the AAA has been struggling with
over the past year or two (see the AAA Newsletter).  With the increasing
popularity of "cultural studies," it is very interesting indeed that
Anthropology has not had a higher presence in the public discussion(s).

In the same vein, historical archaeologists should be making our work
relevant to other disciplines such as history.  The increasing interest in
material culture studies among historians is promising, but *we* are going
to have to promote historical archaeology to them.  The point about
interacting with professional historians is well taken.  Obviously, we need
to target historians with similar interests (and there is a truely huge
variety of historians out there).

As for publishing in journals historians read, this is difficult to do
since these journals are refereed by historians and one has to make it past
the "peer review" process and the disciplines do not speak quite the same
language or have the same goals.  When an anthropologist or historical
archaeologist reads a history work, we are often reading a very different
book than historians are reading. Unfortunately, despite the claims by many
historians and historical societies, interdisciplinary is usually taken to
mean that a non-historian has to master both his/her own field as well as
that of history.  Historians often judge HA writings by their own
disciplinary yardstick and expectations.  I think that historical
archaeologists tend to be more open to accepting works with different goals
(anthropological or historical) because we deal with the subject matter of
both disciplines on a day to day basis.

Cheers,
Mary Ellin


Mary Ellin D'Agostino
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