Robert L Schuyler wrote:

> The discussion raised by my Australian colleague is not new (the reason I
> was going to avoid it!) and it comes down to both a practical (political)
> and an intellectual side.

Agreed, much of this discussion is old hat, but for what it's worth, I
have another familiar, well worn strand to raise - in particular in
response to the comment that:

> Historical Archaeology is a subfield of anthropology, not history, and it
> will never find any substantial academic base outside of anthropology in
> North America (nor from my own observations elsewhere). This housing is
> not only the only game in town but is superior to a housing in history
> departments in that it gives us a broader perspective (but one that does
> NOT exclude anything done by historians) and closely ties us into general
> anthropological archaeology.

Given past posts on my part, it will hardly come as a surprise that I'm
not entirely convinced by this argument.  While archaeology is a
sub-discipline of anthropology in North America, this is, to flog a dead
horse, not the case around the world.  In Britain, of course,
archaeology is an entirely separate discipline, with no overall
conceptual link to anthropology.  This is also the case with the
archaeological sub-disciplines of post-medieval archaeology and British
historical archaeology (and we'll leave the semantics over the
difference to one side for the time being).

Archaeology's place within the academic world has always been an
artificial cultural and conceptual construct.  These artifical
constructs are always subject to change.  They do not provide absolute
truths. That archaeology's academic and theoretical base is so different
on either side of the Atlantic is surely all the proof that's needed.

This is not to argue on my part for the superiority of one perspective
over another (promise).  Anthropological archaeology has worked
wonderfully in North America just as archaeological archaeology has
worked wonderfully in the United Kingdom.  Both regions will no doubt
continue to work within their own uniquely valuable idiom for the
foreseeable future.

What I am arguing is that the assertion that there can only ever be one
correct "house" for any particular kind of archaeology, or indeed any
academic discipline, is false.  Archaeology should be taught according
to what is appropriate nationally or regionally rather than according to
false absolutes.  There are undoubtedly many theoretical or academic
perspectives that would produce bad historical archaeology, but there is
absolutely not a single perspective that produces good archaeology. I
would be willing to wager a considerable amount of money that in a
hundred years time the concepts that inform archaeological practice and
theory in the modern day will appear as quaintly outmoded as
archaeological excavations from 1900 do to us today.  And if one was to
argue that there wasn't any historical archaeology in 1900, well....
doesn't that rather prove my point?

Not that I expect to collect on that bet, mind ;-)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alasdair Brooks
Department of Archaeology
University of York
King's Manor
York
YO1 7EP
England, UK
phone: 01904 433931
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The Buffalo tastes the same on both sides of the border"
Sitting Bull