At the risk of being arrested by the RSPCA I think I should make some
comment.

Firstly it is an interesting debate and I hope the "powers that be" in SHA
are listening and will respond in some way as I think the majority view is
that historical archaeological training should include formal training in
history. What most of the discussion has been is over how much.

It is interesting that those at the core of historical archaeology seem
wedded to the notion of historical archaeology as anthropology while those
at the periphery (eg the UK and Australia and also students) seem happier to
consider historical archaeology having much broader links even being taught
in a history department!

I was taught prehistory in a history department (La Trobe) and the world
didn't end (although I do recall having a total eclipse while I was at Uni )
and the Department went on to prosper. But then a History Department with
Rhys Isaac, Inga Clendinan and Greg Dening would have been fairly tolerant
of archaeology. Anyway, maybe I am just as wedded to my views as those old
enough to remember the New Archaeology. Are we all prisoners of our
undergraduate education?

I think not, as La Trobe never taught me about how to do archival research,
it was my exposure to professional historians through my work that exposed
me to the basics of historical research.  If I had chosen to do so I could
have done a course on varieties of history which would have exposed me to
different historical theories and methods even if the course hid its true
aims. Most history departments should have such courses and my view is that
such a course is a good education for a historical archaeologists allowing
the basic types of historians to be identified (old Marxist, new Marxist,
Annales, E.P. Thompson, post-modern, historical anthropologist ... and so
on). Such a basic understanding of historians and the process of doing
history is, in my view as important to the historical archaeologist as
learning the principals of stratification. they are the building blocks of
what we do history and archaeology.

Iain Stuart