Where does archaeology End?

[1man1desk]

As someone mostly working in EIA, the topic I deal with is 'Cultural Heritage', which is in principle even wider than 'Historic Environment'. In practice, though, it usually boils down to a combination of archaeology, built heritage and historic landscape, all tied together with a little bit of potted history.

What it does mean, though, is that I see things from an integrative perspective. There are no hard boundaries between any of these heritage themes (and you can go even wider without finding any hard boundaries). My current EIA-coordinating role involves bringing people with different skills together to achieve a single, integrated objective.

From that perspective, I don't see why archaeologists (traditionally-defined), historians, built-heritage professionals etc. want to draw sharp lines of demarcation. Many of us don't fit comfortably into any individual pigeon-hole, but have skills from more than one area.

Having said all that, as a former prehistorian, I know that everything after 43 AD is modern rubbish.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[historic building]

There is a very good article by the noted medievalist Alan Brown attempting to slap down archaeologist studying castles which was written in the early 80s - cannot remember the exact date, it is published in Archaeological Journal.

To broadly quote, from memory:

Archaeologist should remember that they are narrow specialists within the field of history" and effectively should know their place.

Now, as 1 man and his desk has said, we are the wider specialism and some historians I know are doing interesting work looking at the context and curation of documents effectively studying them as archaeological artefacts.

Archaeology ends when I go to the pub on Friday after work.

[BAJR Host]

Talking of Castles, I had an interesting occassion when the historical records shold a building event... while the archaeology showed a different story... oh how we argued... but the records can't lie quoth the historian .. but there is the evidence in the wall said I.

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[Shorty]

I'm astonished a historian would say "the records can't lie". It's one of the fundamental problems with documents, trying to assess how far the writer had a particular agenda, the political context etc. In any case, a historian should be excited to have a new perspective on something. I think the integrative approach is best but I suspect there's a degree of snobbery involved for some historians, a desire not to lose the 'upper hand'. I recently came across a problem highlighted by arkies about the movement of pottery (Mississippian) that completely contradicted 18thC documentary accounts. I thought this showed a serious problem with the existing literature but was told it was hardly worth bothering about, which was really disappointing.