Course
Schedule
ARCHY 469a: History and Archaeology
University of
Washington--Spring 2001
(this schedule will change
as we focus our interests over the quarter—please check this website regularly)
Historians
and anthropologists have discovered each other in the past 20 years. Have the
boundaries between the disciplines disappeared? What vestiges remain? What do
the two disciplines have to offer each other? The article by Sherry Ortner is
optional reading for those lacking a firm understanding of how anthropology
developed as a discipline between the 1960s and 1980s, and it is a clear and
remarkably prescient piece, worth reading.
(for
Thursday, March 29)
Cohn,
Bernard
1980 History and Anthropology: The state of play. Comparative Studies in Society and History
22: 356-61.
Ortner,
Sherry
1984
Theory
in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative
Studies in Society and History 28: 368-74.
(for
Tuesday, April 3)
Faubion,
James D.
1993 History
in anthropology. Annual Review of
Anthropology 22: 35-54.
Stocking,
George
1995 Delimiting
anthropology: Historical reflections on the boundaries of a boundless discipline.
Social Research 62(4): 933 (this link will send you to the UW
library listing for the journal, and from there you will have to navigate
yourself to issue 62(4))
April 5: Structuring past events (reviewed by
Scotty Moore and Cheryl Iodice)
What
is the mechanism that links series of events in the past? These readings give
just a taste of the struggle to deal with the theory of change over time, and
to reconcile structuralism with event history. Sahlins has also engaged in a
long debate with Gannath Obeyesekere on other themes. You might be interested
to read his book The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the
Pacific, and Sahlins’ book length reply, How Natives Think, about
Captain Cook for example. Then again, you might not.
Fogelson,
Raymond D.
1989
Ethnohistory
of events and nonevents. Ethnohistory
36(2): 133-147.
Sahlins,
Marshall
1985
Islands of History. University of Chicago
Press. pp.1-72.
Friedman,
Jonathan
1988
No history is an island: An exchange between
Jonathan Friedman and Marshall Sahlins. Critique of Anthropology
8(3):7-51.
April 10: Narrating the stories (reviewed by Coll Thrush and Andrew Brown)
This
is a brief focus on the product end of historical anthropology. How do we
represent the past? Does the form our representations take express unspoken
ways we understand the past? How do other people/cultures “use” history?
Dening,
Greg
1991 A
poetic for histories. In Clio in Oceania: Toward a Historical
Anthropology, pp. 347-380. Aletta Biersack, ed. University of Washington
Press, Seattle.
Bowen,
John R.
1989
Narrative
form and political incorporation: Changing uses of history in Aceh, Indonesia.
Society for Comparative Study of Society
and History 31: 671-93.
Part 2: What can archaeology
add to the mix?
April 12: Historical archaeology’s own past (reviewed
by Chris Lockwood, Catherine Foster and Phillipp Rassmann)
“Historical
archaeology” (like “history” and “anthropology”) has meant a variety of things
over the years and in different places, and we are still debating what
historical archaeology should be. The question could be asked, ‘who really
cares?’ but you should draw your own conclusions. If anything, these readings
will help you understand what many people think of when they think of
“historical archaeology” (Harrington’s view still holds fast), and the types of
research questions that have guided practitioners in the field.
Harrington,
J.C.
1955
Archaeology
as an auxiliary science to American history. American Anthropologist
57(6):1121-1130. Reprinted in Historical Archaeology: A guide to substantive
and theoretical contributions, Robert Schuyler, ed., pp. 3-7. Baywood
Publishing, Farmingdale, New York.
Young,
T.C.
1988
Since
Herodotus, has history been a valid concept? American Antiquity 53: 7-12.
Schuyler,
Robert
1988
Archaeological
remains, documents and anthropology: A call for a new culture history. Historical
Archaeology 22: 36-42.
Deagan, K.
1988 Neither
history nor prehistory: The questions that count in historical archaeology. Historical
Archaeology 22: 7-12.
Funari, Pedro Paulo A., Sian Jones and Martin Hall
1999 Introduction: Archaeology in history. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, P. Funari, S. Jones and M. Hall, eds., pp. 1-20. Routledge, New York.
April
17: Initial project workshop meeting: Meet at Burke Museum loading dock
entrance
April
19: no class because of SAA meetings (use time to work on project proposals—access to
Burke collections, if needed, should be arranged in advance)
April 24: The promise and problems of combining texts
and archaeological data (reviewed by Patrick Meade, Gary Siebel and
Cheryl Iodice)
Project Proposals due at
beginning of class
These
writers grapple with some of the basic problems in combining archaeological
data and written documents in analyses. One theme that continues to run through
historical archaeology is whether one or the other type of data takes
(implicitly or explicitly) a primary role. Do archaeology and historical
documents merely serve to “illustrate” each other, filling in gaps or details,
or can the create use of both data sets provide ways to transcend the “tyranny
of the text” (or artifact)?
Andren,
Anders
1998 Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical archaeology in global
perspective.
Plenum, New York. Chaps. 1 and 5.
Little,
Barbara
1992
Texts,
images, material culture. In Text-Aided Archaeology. B. Little,
editor, pp. 217-221. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Johnson, Matthew
1999 Rethinking historical archaeology. In Historical Archaeology: Back from the Edge, P. Funari, S. Jones and M. Hall, eds., pp. 23-36. Routledge, New York.
April 26: Project workshop (all class members meet at Burke for short updates before beginning project work)
May 1: A few more theoretical problems, and some
proposed solutions (reviewed by Scotty Moore, Andrew Brown and Chao Chin
Yung)
These
readings touch on material cultural as text, the problems of boundaries, and
different ways of dealing with time. The Annales framework of different
time scales may have much to offer archaeologists. Bernard Knaap’s article from
his book offers a more in-depth look at the Annales framework.
Last,
Jonathan
1995 The
nature of history. In Interpreting
Archaeology: Finding Meaning in the Past. Ian Hodder Michael Shanks,
Alexandra Alexandri, Victor Buchli, John Carman, Jonathan Last, and Gavin
Lucas, editors, pp. 141-157. New York: Routledge.
Lightfoot, Kent
1994
Culture
contact studies: Redefining the relationship between prehistoric and historical
archaeology. American Antiquity 60(2):
199-217.
Beaudry, M, L. Cook and S. Mrozowski
1991 Artifacts
and active voices: material culture as social discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality, R.
McGuire and R. Paynter, editors, pp. 150-191. London: Basil Blackwell.
*Knaap,
A. Bernard
1992 Archaeology
and Annales: Time, space and change. In Archaeology, Annales and
Ethnohistory. A. Bernard Knaap, editor, pp. 1-21. Cambridge University
Press.
*optional
May
3: Project workshop (all class members meet at Burke for short updates before beginning
project work)
May 8: Case studies in historical archaeology (reviewed by Catherine Foster, Gary Siebel and Gina Rappaport)
Culture contact, colonialism and resistance
Stoler
isn’t an archaeologist, but her study is sympathetic to the kinds of social
boundary questions that many of us ask of the record. How would you propose
archaeological data might add to her research? Clarke and Dietler both use
nuanced understandings of the nature of culture contact to open up new avenues
for investigating how people lived contact experiences in the past. Think about
how each of them uses material culture and written documents in concert.
Stoler,
Ann L.
1989
Rethinking
colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule. Comparative Studies in Society and History
31:134-61.
Clarke,
Anne
2000 Time,
tradition and transformation: The negotiation of cross-cultural engagements on
Groote Eylandt, northern Australia. In The Archaeology of Difference:
Negotiating Cross-cultural Engagements in Oceania. Anne Clarke and Robin
Torrence, editors, pp. 142-181. Routledge, New York.
Dietler,
Michael
1998 Consumption,
agency and cultural entanglement: Theoretical implications of a Mediterranean
colonial encounter. In Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, culture
change and archaeology. James Cusik, ed., pp. 288-315, Center for
Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale, IL.
May
10: Project workshop (all class members meet at Burke for short updates before beginning
project work)
May 15: More case studies in historical archaeology
(reviewed by Chao Chin Yung, Patrick Meade and Chris Lockwood)
The development of capitalism, social class and
consumerism
While
the call to define historical archaeology as the study of the development of
capitalism may be a bit over restrictive, it remains an important part of the
subdiscipline’s diverse body of research. How can material objects define
class? What role do the two kinds of evidence play in this type of research?
McGuire and Walker take it the (inevitable) next step and examine class among
the archaeologists themselves; it’s good fun.
Hall, Martin
1992 Small
things and the mobile, conflictual fusion of power, fear and desire. In The
Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in honor of James Deetz.
A. Yentsch and M. Beaudry, eds., pp. 373-400. CRC Press, Boca Raton.
Wall,
Diana Dizerega
1999 Examining
gender, class and ethnicity in nineteenth-century New York City. Historical
Archaeology 33(1): 102-117.
Wurst,
Louann
1999 Internalizing
class in historical archaeology. Historical Archaeology 33(1): 7-21.
*McGuire,
Randall and Mark Walker
1999 Class
confrontations in archaeology. Historical Archaeology 33(1):
159-183.
May
17: Project workshop (all class members meet at Burke for short updates before beginning
project work)
May 22: Representing research results—writing and
other expressions
Here
we revisit the themes of week 3, but with a focus on the particular challenges
of communicating the process and results of archaeological research. Here are
some intriguing alternatives to the journal article or 15 minute conference
paper. Schrire’s piece is a book length work that combines “colonial”
autobiography, history and archaeology in a narrative mode. If you have
encountered other interesting ways to communicate archaeological/historical
data and the past, please present a summary in class.
Praetzellis,
Adrian
1998
Why
every archaeologist should tell stories once in a while. Historical
Archaeology 32(1): 1-3.
Praetzellis,
Adrian and Mary Praetzellis
1998 A
Connecticut Merchant in Chinadom: A play in one act. Historical
Archaeology 32(1): 86-93.
Deetz,
James
1998
Discussion:
Archaeologists as storytellers. Historical Archaeology 32(1): 94-96.
Cook,
Lauren J.
1998 “Katherine
Nanny, alias Naylor”: A life in puritan Boston. Historical Archaeology
32(1): 15-19
*Schrire,
Carmel
1995 Digging
Through Darkness: Chronicles of an archaeologist. University Press of Virginia,
Charlottesville.
*
optional
May
24: Project workshop (all class members meet at Burke for short updates before beginning
project work)
May 29 and May 31: Final Project presentations (venue and format to be determined)
June 1: Final Project reports
due at 5PM