neither history nor prehistory

8/7/2019 Neither History Nor Prehistory

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KATHLEEN A. DE AGA N

Neither History Nor Prehistory:the Questions that Count inHistorical ArchaeologyABSTRACT

Historical archaeologys singular and unique strengthamong the social sciences is its simultaneous access tomultiple categories of evidence bearing upon the sameprocesses or events in past human behavior (either imme-diately or remotely in the past). Although this has beenobvious for nearly two decades, historical archaeology hasnot produced the original and unparalleled insights intohuman cultural behavior or evolution that we might expectto result from the unique perspective and data base of thefield. We have instead tended to weakly reproduce ortest insights and principles resulting from history orprehistoric archaeology. Both the questions we have askedand the methods we have used to answer them have beengrounded in fields other than historical archaeology andhave generally ignored its special perspective.

It is the premise of this paper that there are potentialcontributions of historical archaeology not duplicatable byany other field. Our present operational and m ethodologicalprocedures, however, (grounded in prehistory and history)are neither appropriate nor adequate to deal with them. Th iswill be explored through the issues of defining the rightquestio ns for historical archaeology, and identifying theappropriate approaches to employ in answering them.

Schuyler in his 1979 volume, Historical Archae-ology. Certain of the questions themselves areworth considering, however, because they con-tinue to guide our self-perceptions as scholars, andthis appears to have been a factor in the inhibitionof our intellectual development as a discipline. Themost pervasive of these questions was that ofwhether historical archaeology developed fromhistory or from anthropology, with the underlyingissue of whether historical archaeology is essen-tially historical, humanistic or scientific in itsorientation.

The issue of our parentage is perhaps lessdogmatic today that it was twenty years ago.Historical archaeology is clearly the offspring ofboth history and anthropology, inheriting the ca-pability to address historical or scientific ques-tions, and to use historical or scientific methods.We share this capability with prehistoric archaeol-ogy, and it must be acknowledged that both fieldshave produced fine work in both the historicaland anthropological arenas. We have come torecognize that particularizing and general-izing approaches are not mutually exclusivemodes of inquiry within a discipline, and can worktogether in the larger intellectual process of tryingto understand and explain human culture andbehavior in the past and in the present.This mellowing effect has come about for anumber of reasons, not the least of which has beenchange and dialogue among historians about theirown disciplinary definition and proper orientation.


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8interconnected nature of the modern world (that is,the world after 1500). The work of ImmanuelWallerstein (1974), Fernand Braudel (1974) andAndre Gunder Frank (1967) have underscored thenecessity for more integrated approaches that tran-scend traditional disciplinary boundaries. This hashad an obvious effect on our sense of alignmentand identity in historical archaeology since 1970,in that a strict distinction between history andanthropology now appears not only difficult, butunproductive. This has occurred in other socialsciences as well, involved in the interdisciplinaryarea studies that arose in the decade of the 1960s.These studies forced an awareness among socialscientists (including historians) as to the scope andmethods of each others disciplines. As a result, anumber of synthetic studies of modem worldphenomena have blurred disciplinary lines andimpacted our thinking about the social sciences(Braudel 1980, 1981, 1974; Wallerstein 1974;Wolf 1982; Mintz 1985; Sahlins 1985). Theseworks seek to understand and/or explain the pro-cesses by which cultural forms mediate social andecological relationships among human populationsin the post-1500 world, often through Marxian-derived analyses of capitalism and its impacts.Historical archaeology is clearly relevant in thisundertaking as the only discipline with both chron-ological depth and access to the non-intentionalmaterial by-products of life in modern times.In order to realize our potential contributions in

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22historical archaeology contribute that cannot beachieved by any other field of study? The answer,obviously, lies in historical archaeologys uniquecapability of gaining simultaneous access to thepast through multiple, independent categories ofevidence, a data base characterized by Schuyler asthe spoken word, the written word, observedbehavior and preserved behavior (1977). Ourspecial purview therefore is most appropriatelythose issues related to life in the post-1500 worldthat require both testimony and material by-products to be accurately understood.This special attribute of historical archaeologyhas been recognized and discussed from the earli-est days of the field (Harrington 1955; Deetz 1968;Schuyler 1970), most frequently in the use ofsimultaneous emic and etic statements aboutthe same past circumstances as an index to theveracity of the documentary record. These multi-ple contexts have also been used to gain insightinto past perception or cognition (Deetz 1968,1977; Leone 1977b; Deagan 1983:264-65;Yentsch 1983). In the context of the modernworld, this simultaneous access to documentaryand material evidence provides the most directpath to recovering and understanding economicorganization and the social processes related to it.This has been proposed by Leone as readingsociety through its production (1977a:xx) anddemonstrated by Rathje (1977) to be a workableand effective approach. Somewhat puzzlingly,


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NEITHER HISTORY NOR PREHISTORYmeaning of the archaeological remains. Al-though this sometimes provides what we often calla richer picture of life in the past, it does littleto take advantage of the real potentials of historicalarchaeology, and produces little information thatprobably could not have been acquired through amore thorough examination of the historical doc-umentation. The questions that count cannot beanswered by either historical or archaeologicaldata alone, or through simple comparison of thetwo data categories.

New World colonialism, Western expansion,the rise of capitalism and its myriad related issuesoffer an important focus for modern historicalarchaeology, and one that places it squarely withinthe basic concerns of the social sciences (seeLeone 1977a). There are many issues that can onlybe understood by reference to both documentaryand material accounts of past conditions, mostlyrelated to the development of new means ofproduction, accumulation, distribution and humansocial organization. Slavery, imperialism, classformation, cultural syncretism, the manifestationof economic inequality among classes, consumerchoice behavior and accelerated environmentaldegradation are a few of the related topics that canbe accurately described and understood only by ahistorical archaeological approach (that is, throughthe use of written testimony in conjunction withmaterial by-products). Some work in the field isalready turning successfully in this direction, such

9sense, in that they either concentrate on a specifictime and place, or explain a particular circum-stance by reference to historical developments.There are many such questions that depend uponthe multiple evidence access of historical archae-ology. One obvious and early-appreciated exampleis the archaeology of slaves and other economi-cally and socially disenfranchised groups (seeSchuyler 1976, 1980; Singleton 1985). Neither thehistorical record nor the archaeological recordalone can serve to reconstruct the past lifeways ofsuch people, or to investigate their roles in thecomplex, interconnected modern world. The ap-plication of historical archaeology to traditionallyhistorical issues for which there is simply inade-quate documentation constitutes a valid and impor-tant focus in the field, and one that boasts the mostsuccessful contributions of historical archaeologyto date.Other questions appropriate to the unique capa-bilities of historical archaelogy focus on under-standing general cultural phenomena that tran-scend specific time and space. A classic examplein which historical archaeology has taken a some-what slow lead has been in the study of accultur-ation. The obvious advantages of North Americancontact period sites for understanding acculturationand other kinds of contact-induced culture changehave often been pointed out, and were, in fact, thefocus of some of the earliest historical archaeologyin a social science vein (Deetz 1963; 1965). Thisearly promise has not been fully realized, how-


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10ask questions that count, we cannot answerthem without a methodology specific to historicalarchaeology. Certain elements of a methodologyfor the recovery, analysis and ordering of historicalarchaeological data have been developed, mostnotably those of South (1977);Noel Hume (1969)and Reitz and Scarry (1985). We have not devel-oped a methodology specifically designed to takeadvantage of the multiple categories of evidence inhistorical archaeology, however, and this has cer-tainly been a factor in the failure of the field torealize its full potential. Much of the best recentwork on historical archaeological issues in themodern world ultimately relies more heavily ondocumentary, cartographic or geographical datathan on archaeological data in its interpretations(cf. Lewis 1984; Paynter 1982).Cogent arguments were offered in the earlyyears of the disciplines existence to both supportand refute the proposition that historical archaeol-ogy properly shares the methodology of prehistoricarchaeology, with the more or less simple additionof documents (for a review and discussion of thesearguments, see Cleland and Fitting 1968). Theview of methodological unity with prehistory hasbeen highly appealing to the past and currentgenerationof archaeologists who have been trainedoverwhelmingly in anthropology departments thattraditionally concentrate on the study of prehistoricor non-Western people. Most of us received ourmethodological training in the context of prehis-toric archaeology, and we learned to apply re-

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22difference in both the questions we ask and in ourmethods for answering them (see Schuyler 1970,1976; Leone 1977a). It is in some cases possible torefer to our own experience to functionally andmeaningfully interpret the material world (such asthe case of a rosary, for example). It is possiblethat our prehistoric archaeology heritage hasslowed down the process of going beyond acceptedmethodologies to develop others-like Souths-that are specifically appropriate to the concernsand capabilities of historical archaeology.

One area in which historical archaeology hasbegun to realize its unique potentials is that ofbasic research in archaeology, or the developmentof middle-range theory to link our observations ofthe archaeological record to a reasonable approxi-mation of the past events that formed that record.The combined application of documentary andmaterial evidence has been successful in the devel-opment of principles for the archaeological recog-nition of normal stylistic evolution (Deetz andDethlefson 1967; South 1972; Cleland 1972); eco-nomic stress (Rathje 1977); residence patterns(Deetz 1965) and variability in economic status(Miller 1980; Otto 1984; Deagan 1983).

There are many other concerns that could andshould be considered in any discussion of thequestions that count in historical archaeology.There is not, unfortunately, time to consider themin detail here. One particularly troublesome issueis the potential importance of historical archaeol-ogy in service to other fieldsof inquiry, such as the


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NEITHER HISTORY NOR PREHISTORYcan answer. These, for North American archaeol-ogists, are grounded in the study of the complex,post-1500 world system and the forms of humanorganization and interaction within it regardless ofwhether these problems have a traditional identifi-cation as either historical or scientific. Inorder to develop our potential to contribute in asingular way to the study of the modern world, wemust identify and focus upon those issues thatdepend on simultaneous access to both written andmaterial evidence. We also have to develop ourown specific methodologies to integrate and usethose categories of evidence. We are not histori-ans, nor are we prehistorians, but we are rather amodem discipline with our own specific focus thatcan make otherwise unobtainable contributions tothe study of the modern world.

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KATHLEEN . DEAGANFLORIDA TATEMUSEUMGAINESVILLE,LORIDA 261 IUNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

neither history nor prehistory

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