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7/28/2019 Review - Method and Theory in Historical Archeology by Stanley South-Researchs Strategies in Historical Archeolo

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Method and Theory in Historical Archeology by Stanley South; Research Strategies in

Historical Archeology by Stanley SouthReview by: Charles E. ClelandThe American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Jun., 1979), pp. 711-712Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1855409 .

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General 711resist oolish conomies,whichhas not been donehere, that omit bibliographies nd biographicalinformationbout thequalifications f ditors ndauthorswithin he end pages. Publishers houldnot be permitted, ithout rotest, o assumeread-ers havethekinds f nformationhat nly nsiderspossess.

F. P. KINGSmithsoniannstitutionPAUL THOMPSON. The VoiceofthePast: Oral History.New York: OxfordUniversity ress. 1978. Pp. xi,257. Cloth 10.95, paper 5.50.Out of Englandcomes the first ook to combinetheory f oral history, he technical rocesses n-volved, nd a road map ofwhere ralevidence itsinto the landscape of Western historiography.Alivewith oncrete xamples, his mallvolume sideal forhistorians and foundation fficers) hoaregrapplingwith he relative alue of ralhistoryas a primary ource, for eachers n searchof abasic text hat will both nformnd provokeivelyclassroom discussion, and for practitioners nother isciplineshatuse oralsources, articularlyanthropologists nd sociologists.Ten pages ofmodelquestionsntheappendixwillbe invaluableas concrete uggestionsornovice nterviewersndas a check list forveterans; he fullness nd theannotations n the fifteen ages ofbibliographyalone are worth he priceofthe book.Paul Thompson, sociologist t Essex Univer-sity, s an articulate pokesman or heviewthat"a historys requiredwhich eads toaction:not oconfirm, ut to change the world."With that ashis premise,he places oral historyn a centralposition: The nature fmost xistingecords storeflect the standpoint of authority.... Witnessescan now also be called from heunderclasses,heunprivileged, nd the defeated.... In so doing,oralhistory as radical mplicationsor hesocialmessageofhistorys a whole."Whether he readers greethathistoryhouldbe aimed at social action or not, theywill findThompsonmaking convincingase for ral his-tory n elitist s well as thepredictable, emoticsubjects: political history s well as lives ofop-pressed minorities; usiness nd industry s wellas labor; militarynd diplomatic s well as urbanandfamily. or theorthodox istorian, hompsondetailsexampleafter xample in which oral his-tory as shown hat xisting ocumentaryecordsare both nsufficientnd misleading.

Reminding s thatreality s complex nd many-sided,he also illustrates hat series f nterviewswith wide selection fparticipantssparticularlysuited ocapture hisuntidiness f hepast.One of

his numerous xamples s takenfrom rojects hattracethe development f scientific heory:onlyoral sources capturethe dead ends, misunder-standings, ccidentaldiscoveries, nd the settingof acuterivalries." imilarly,n aborhistory,t sthe oral interviewshat get beyond he heroics o"the morehumdrum, onfused eality nd differ-entstandpointswithin he rank nd file."For many, the newness of tape-recorded ralhistorymakes t awkward o incorporatento ra-ditionalmethodology,ut oral history erse is asold as historytself. hompson akes hereader na quotation-filledripthroughhe history f oralevidence, alling n Herodotus n the fifthenturyB.C., thence through Lucian, Bede, Voltaire,Marx, Engels, HenryMayhew,Macaulay,H. H.Bancroft,ulesMichelet,ndon nto he wentiethcentury o Thompson'sfavorite, eatriceWebb.(BeatriceWebb also starswithpresent-dayisto-rians n advice ndcounsel n the hapter n inter-viewing echniques.)Perhaps here s a social mes-sage in the fact hatonewhoadmits oa "socialistperspective" p. x) has writtenhisfor ll histo-rians,particularlyhe orthodox,he conservative,the elitist-Thompson's adjectivesforAmericanhistorians;he ronysthat his xpositionn oralhistory,he mostcomplete odate, maywellhas-ten the day whenhistoriography,n a sublimelyreactionary wing,willgo back tothe old methodofrelying n oral sources o reconstructhepast.

WILLA BAUMAMELIA FRYRegional Oral HistoryOfficeThe Bancroft ibraryUniversityf California,Berkeley

STANLEY SOUTH. Method nd Theoryn HistoricalAr-cheology.Studies nArcheology.) ew York: Aca-demicPress. 977. Pp. xxiii, 345. I6.50.STANLEY SOUTH, editor.Research trategiesn Histori-cal Archeology.Studies n Archeology.) ew York:Academic Press. 1977. Pp. xxvii,345. 19.50.The lastseveraldecades have seenthe emergenceofhistorical rcheology, newfield hatfocuses nthearcheology f ites hatpostdate heexpansionof European populations fter he fourteenthen-tury. incethese iteswereoccupiedby peoplesofliterate radition, hey re distinguishedrom re-literateor prehistoricites. Because of the timeperiod t deals with,historicalrcheology ses in-formationnd data that have traditionally eenassignedto the realmsofeither istoryranthro-pology. In Method nd TheorynHistoricalArcheology,Stanley outhdoesnotdwellonthestormyourt-

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7I2 ReviewsfBooksship and marriage ftheseparentdisciplines.Hedoes, however, resent ome definitions n howthe offspringhould be reared.One of thedevelopmental ifficultiesfhistori-cal archeology s that ts mixedheritage equiresthatpractitionerse skilled n theuse ofhistory,rootedfirmlys it is in the humanities, s well asanthropology, socialscience.South's book pres-ents a strong nd persuasive rgument hatthemethodologyfhistorical rcheologymustrest nthe cientificecoveryndanalysis f rcheologicalmaterial n order to elucidate the preserved at-terning f human behaviorresponsiblefor andretrievable rom he archeological ecord.As illus-tration,South defines everalpatterns f refusedisposaltypical f he colonialperiodon the East-ern seaboard. Testingrevealsthat,for xample,theBritish olonialswho settlednthis readuringtheeighteenth enturyxhibited highly imilarpattern rrespectivef locality, ite function,rclass ofoccupants.This pattern,alled the Caro-lina Pattern,"may be contrastedwithotherdis-posal patterns ttributableo French-and-Indian-War sitesbelonging o the"FrontierPattern"ofdisposal.It is conceivable hat historians tudying heseperiods mayfind hese newlydefined atterns fdubioussignificancen ordering nd interpretingthe tierofhistoric act.South's conclusions, ow-ever,go well beyond he mportance f thesepat-ternsperse. This book,as well as a companionanthologyfhistoric ite tudies,ResearchtrategiesinHistoricalArcheology,dited by South, reveal thatmany spectsofhuman behaviornthepast maynever ppear in the iterate ecord. uch behaviorwas theresult funarticulatednd/or venuncon-scious adherence o culturally etermined aluesand beliefsranslatednto hingsnd events.f hisproposition s correct, nd these books presentconvincing videncethat it is, then historiansshouldnote that t calls intoquestion wowidelyheld assumptions. hese are: (i) the iterate ec-ordrepositednbooks nd documents ontains hebest evidence orunderstandinghepast; and (2)the survivingrtifactual ecordof the past is,therefore,f dubious use forhistorians n theirpursuit fhistorical nderstanding.ndeed,Southand his colleaguesdemonstratehat artifactualevidencecan reveal significantnformationon-cerning oth the facts fhistory nd the historicprocess ndthat his nformations often ot vail-able in the iterate ecord.Historians hould be warned that these booksare weightedwith the detailsof archeology.An-thropologists ill be disappointed t the severeregionalbias of this book. And readersof anyacademic preference illprobably greethat thediagramsmeantto be "heuristic evices" and la-

beled "chickenchart," "pig chart, and so onmighthave been more aptly included underthecommon abel "corn chart."These criticismsaside, Method nd Theory n His-torical Archeologys a landmark book. The in-troductoryhapter hould be required eading orthose nterestednthetheory fhistoricalrcheol-ogy and its relationship o history nd anthropol-ogy.The well-illustratedhapters hatfollow ys-tematicallyefine nd test heproposedCarolinaandFrontier atternsf efuse isposal.The chap-terexploring nalytical echniques xaminesbothkitchen rtifact atterns nd material nventorypatterns nd includes n insightfulummarizingessay, The Flax HackleExample. The followingchaptersdiscuss the mportance fquantificationin patternrecognition s well as methodologicalconsiderationsn collecting mpiricaldata in thefield.A final hapter n thearcheologist'sespon-sibilitiesn culturalresourcemanagements welldone butbelongs n another ook.Research trategies n Historical Archeology,ditedby Stanley outh, s dedicated o "those whoreli-giouslybelieve that the archeological ecord re-veals farmore hanmerelywhathappened,whenand to whom. Indeed, he welve tudies ollectedin this book illustrate hat thispossibility as al-readybecome a reality.As perhapsthe most ex-citing xample,we can turn o the fine tudybyKenneth E. Lewis "Sampling the ArcheologicalFrontier:Regional Models and ComponentAnal-ysis." By placinghisexamination fthearcheol-ogyof the site ofCamden on the eighteenth-cen-turyCarolina frontiern a theoreticalontext, eexamines heconcept ffrontiers,husrevealingspecific rocess f ocioculturaldaptationbycol-onizing ocietiesto frontierituations.This per-spectivemovesus a long wayfrom herepetitiveidiosyncratical nderstanding f particularfron-tiers o understandinghe frontierrocess.These two books are significant. heynotonlyillustrate he bestof nterdisciplinaryesearch, utalso show hat tproduces ubstantive esults. er-haps more importantly,hey llustrate hat thewhole ofhistorys more hanthe sum of ts docu-ments nd artifacts.

CHARLES E. CLELANDMichlganStateUniversityC. R. BOXER. TheChurch ilitant nd berian xpan-sion,440-1770. (JohnsHopkins ymposia nCom-parative History,number io.) Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityress.1978. Pp. Xi, 148.$9.50.This slimbook onsists ffour ectures eliveredtJohnsHopkinsUniversitynd publishedwith d-ditional notes. The subject is huge, requiring

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