Jake:
      I thought it was interesting that in your treatment of history's role
in historic archaeology, you left out the most interesting question, "why".
(why is it here? Why was it abandoned? Why did they build out of this?  Why
did they build in this stile? Why are there no feminine artifacts
here?...ad infinitum) After all, the answer to the question "why" is what
fills up the vast majority of both historical an archaeological works.
The question might be covered loosely in your historical background section
but I think it needs to be handled more overtly.  Admittedly this takes the
historical archaeologist into unfamiliar territory, but I think we need to
do our best to create an emic understanding of our sites and the best tool
for doing this is the historical record.

Morgan Blanchard

>     But for hist.arch., historical research does, generall, three things
>     for us: 1) the overview, or historical background, the broad context
>     in which we think a site originated and was used; 2) site history, and
>     ethnographic and material culture info from the records -- how life
>     was lived at the site, and what was used there, or at one very like
>     it; and 3) structural history, using the documents to tell us what was
>     built at a site, and where, and when, and how it was changed.