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ROBERT L. SCHUYLER Archaeological Remains, Documents, and Anthropology: a Call for a New Culture History ABSTRACT Historical archaeology is either a significant or superfluous endeavor, depending on the level one stands on to critique the discipline. If theoretical questions concerning the nature, dynamics and evolution of cultures are the starting point, or equally if more substantive but similarly broad questions of modern “world systems” are selected, then the results of a quarter century of excavations on historic sites are indeed weak and unconvincing. In contrast, a view grounded on “culture history’’ or “historic ethnography” finds historical archaeology to be potentially an impressive, productive field, equal in many ways to other data sources including written records. It is suggested that “historic ethnography,” based equally on archaeology and written sources, is the future natural sphere for the archaeological investigations of the modern world (A.D. 1400-20th century). Introduction Although twenty years have passed since the founding of the Society for Historical Archaeology, it is more appropriate to speak of historical archaeology as entering its second quarter-century of growth. The 1967 organizational meeting in Dallas was the culmination of the “proto-history” of the field; a “proto-history” initiated within governmental agencies as early as the 1930s. The designation of any precise starting point for a scholarly field is arbitrary; nevertheless, a more important founding date would be 1960. In that year, John Cotter introduced American Civilization 770 (“Problems and Methods of Historical Archaeology”-Both terms 6 credits, Thursday 2-4) at the University of Pennsylvania. His course, which was anthropological in orientation, was soon paralleled on the other side of the continent when Arthur Woodward offered Anthro- pology 294 (“Historical Archaeology” 2 credits) in the Spring 1964 semester at the University of Arizona. Cotter’s class was more important because of its continuity which almost spanned two decades and because it was a graduate offering. It was only when historical archaeology entered an academic setting that its intellectual foundation could be finalized by training scholars solely dedicated to that specialization. After at least a quarter of a century of existing as a recognized area of research a 1987 evaluation of the field must answer one basic question. Is historical archaeology a successful endeavor? Discussion of this question is usually deflected by two obstacles of our own making which must be pushed aside. The first impediment is the “P-P-PP-P Complex,” an acronym for the “PsuedoProcessual Progress Proffered by Prehistorians.” This complex confuses historical archaeologists with the self defacing belief that prehistorians use more sophisticated methodology and, more importantly, have successfully issued processual statements, while historical archaeology is floundering on a particularistic level. This belief is erroneous and is diverting attention from the real problems. The possibility that two social groups, rather than one, may have occupied Lindenmeier, the probability that matrilocal residence structured the assemblage at Carter Ranch, the observation that Upper Paleolithic cave art may be related to social boundaries between groups, or the embeddedness or disembeddedness of Monte Alban within ancient Oaxacan civilization are all statements of culture history, not process. Our colleagues are dealing with a black box-prehistory; any enlightening statements are legitimately impressive but none of these advances have done much to directly illuminate the nature of culture or why it evolves. Historical archaeology is no less accomplished on the processual level; it simply is dealing with a box with windows in it. A second intermittent obstruction can be removed with a suggestion. If I were crude I would say ‘stop trying to kiss the demkre of historians’ but since I am not crude I will urge, ‘stop trying to make uncalled for offerings at the altar of Clio.’ This error is serious, has nothing to do with ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS historians, with whom indeed we have potential connections, which I will return to, but rather involves a misidentification of the points of interaction. Evaluating the success of historical archaeology depends on the perspective chosen; one is internal, the other external. Within its own boundaries historical archaeology is impressively productive. It is taught as a set-off, specific subject, at a growing number of colleges and universities and there are a good ten graduate programs (M.A. and Ph.D.) with a primary commitment to the field. Compared to 1960 an astonishing amount of field research advances have been made, not in one but three spheres: contract, governmental agencies (now ranging from the federal to the municipal levels), and the academic-museum world. A massive, descriptive, and occasionally interpretive, literature has been produced, our knowledge and control of historic assemblages is improving each year and general archaeological methodology has been adapted to historic sites. When a younger social historian such as James Borchert, the author of Alley Life in Washington (1980:244) states: 37 European society after A.D. 1400, geographical expansion into the non-Western world and establishment of European hegemony, reaction of native cultures and civilizations as active participants in this process, transformation of the process itself with the industrial revolution and a secondary but more pervasive global impact carrying the world into the 20th century. Wolf’s scholarship is exhaustive reaching to a detailed level of recent synthesis and interpretation by both social scientists and historians. Even prehistoric archaeology (surprisingly, considering the temporal focus of the book) is utilized. In the Introduction (Wolf 1982:4) is found a statement: If social and cultural distinctiveness and mutual separation were a hallmark of humankind, one would expect to find it most easily among the so-called primitives, people “without history,” supposedly isolated from the external world and from one another. On this presupposition, what would we make of the archaeological findings that European trade goods appear in sites on the Niagra frontier as early as 1570, and that by 1670 sites of the Onondaga subgroup of the Iroquois reveal almost no items of native manufacture except pipes? This use of data from contact-period sites, is the only reference in Wolf’s volume that in any A third possible way [the first being oral history; the second, manner derives from historical archaeology and ethnography] to avoid the problem of biased sources is through even it is drawn secondarily from Francis Jenhistorical archaeology. nings, a well known ethnohistorian. We must not it would seem, even as he adds “it was not be tempted to fault Eric Wolf because Europe and practical for this study,” that historical archaeol- the People Without History only embarrassingly ogy has joined the panoply of established fields. highlights the fact that the findings of 25 years of Or has it? Is there external evidence of work on intensive research on the archaeological record of historic sites and assemblages making meaningful the modern world (A.D. 1400-20th century) is additions to general social scientific and historical being successfully ignored by not only historians but even our immediate colleagues in social anscholarship? In 1982 Eric Wolf, a social anthropologist, thropology. Externally in its relationship to genpublished a major work entitled Europe and the eral scholarship historical archaeology shows little People Without History. This book is a significant impact. Why? Why is historical archaeology internally indicator for archaeology not because of its theoretical stance, which is Marxist, but because of its successful but externally relatively unproductive? Archaeologists, because of the influence of subject matter. Wolf is the fist contemporary anthropologist to successfully attempt a global cultural resource management, tend to speak in synthesis of the emergence and transformation of terms of Phase I, I1 and 111. I propose that the the modern world. Its topical divisions practically growth of historical archaeology as a field should define historical archaeology as it is practiced in logically follow a tripartite-phased advance. Phase North America: Post-medieval development of I-the creation of a distinctive, new area of re- 38 search has been achieved. We have arrived at the boundary of Phase 11-a joining with general scholarship via descriptive, interpretive contributions, but have failed to cross over and are now running the risk of turning back on ourselves into an involutionary dead end. We must return to the initial years of the existence of the Society for Historical Archaeology to understand this situation. During the late 1960s a series of articles opened a discussion on the interrelationship of archaeology, history and anthropology. Many feel this debate has spent itself; however, I disagree. It is a set of unresolved problems that all too frequently are expressed as relationships between history and archaeology when actually they almost exclusively involve anthropology that have frozen historical archaeology on Phase I. I will reexamine these questions by simply stating a position on the relationship of history and science which is neither original nor very radical. There are two major traditions of scholarship concerned with human beings as social creatures: the historical and the social scientific. These traditions are not dichotomous, nor, necessarily in conflict, but they are different. These differences involve at least the following three aspects. First, a specific subject may be studied as a legitimate end in itself, or it may be viewed as merely an example of something else: a generalization, preferably a process, or even a “covering law” (which are probabilistic not absolute statements); historians tend to the former perspective, social scientists the latter. Second, which is a corollary of the first, has been called the “uniqueness thesis” but more fairly should be seen as a deep respect for the singularity of events in history as contrasted with a greater willingness to simplify (or, if you prefer, violate) that richness of a given phenomenon; historians tend to the former, social scientists to the latter. Third, the most significant difference, which is more blurred because certain schools of anthropological thought are fundamentally historical and not scientific in their practice, is the basic point of reference in research. Historians focus on humans, either, as with narrative and chronicle history, as individuals, or, as with social history, as groups, while social scientists, particularly an- HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22 thropologists, may have a non-human reference point: culture. If this division between history and social science is accepted then historical archaeology must be placed with history, anthropology, on the fence or in its own self contained category. I believe it exclusively should be classed with anthropology because of all the factors listed above but particularly the relationship with its data source. For over two decades historians, unless they were unemployed, have been politely rebuffing the occasional wooings of some historical archaeologists. I believe this rejection is understandable because the archaeological record has little to say in regard to their perspective. Artifacts do not communicate while written documents, even of a social historic nature, talk directly to the researcher. If, in contrast, the reference point is shifted to an entity which is not equal to people, single or in groups, then potentially the data sources also shift and expand. I will return to this possibility later. The boundary between Phase I and Phase I1 of historical archaeology has turned into a barrier for a number of complex reasons involving culture theory, but more basic is the simple fact that almost no historical archaeologists are using their birthright as anthropologists. The problem involves anthropology not history. Historical archaeologists are only analyzing one of the data sources available by definition to their field, the archaeological record. They do not treat the documentary record, the second data source, equally. Either they ignore or at best allow the archaeological remains to structure their use of written sources. Egress from this predicament is possible if historical archaeologists start to act like anthropologists and produce, what I will call, “historic ethnography.” Anthropologists and a few anthropologically influenced historians have already began work on the ladder needed to get out of the excavation pit historical archaeology has started to dig for itself by remaining on Phase I. Ethnohistory is the first rung. By ethnohistory I mean an operational definition: the analysis of documentary sources left by cultural group A about group B. An analogy exists between the ethnographic distance between a so- ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS cia1 anthropologist and the foreign society being studied and the distance preserved in such complex sources (Thurman 1982). Ethnohistory has two relationships to historical archaeology. The first is substantive and substantial. Half of all archaeological research on periods post-dating A.D. 1400 could be considered ethnohistoric in that the field is deeply concerned not only with European and European colonial societies but also with transculturation between these groups and native cultures. All scholars working on contact sites should also be doing ethnohistory. However, I do not want to discuss this requirement but rather a more general and simple message. Ethnohistory has taught both anthropologists and historians that documentary sources are much more complex than a direct reading would imply. I am not referring to source analysis but to the very nature of documents as a cultural product. The richness of the symbolic and material meaning preserved in documents is only now being recognized and it was in part the more complex nature of ethnohistoric sources that helped to bring this potential to the fore. The message for historical archaeologists is that it is possible for them as anthropologists to analyse not only the archaeology but also the written sources within the traditions of their own field. It is the failure of archaeologistsdealing with the modern period to do such analyses that created the barrier between Phases I and 11. The archival sources may well be explored, perhaps in some detail, but these investigations are structured within the needs of the archaeological record. This artificial narrowness must be abandoned. We can not solve the problem by turning to a group of mythical historians who supposedly will do our research for us, nor should we want such a relationship which would fundamentally cripple a movement to Phase 11. 39 (1982:5), one of the historians, has suggested the term “ethnographic history”: Anthropologists cross frontiers to explore communities other than their own. Social historians cross time spans to study earlier periods. Whether one moves away from oneself in cultural space or in historical time, one does not go far before one is in a world where the taken-for-granted must cease to be so. Translation then becomes necessary. Ways must be found of attaining an understanding of the meanings that the inhabitants of other worlds have given to their own everyday customs. Isaac has produced a convincing example of “ethnographic history” in his 1982 prize winning book, The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1 790. Ten years earlier Anthony F. C. Wallace produced another example, although he uses the label “ethnohistory,” with Rockdale, the Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (1972). These two works differ in several aspects (one is concerned with a community, the other with a culture area, one is Geertzian in its theoretical approach, the other more generally mentalist) but together they offer a significant advance in diachronic scholarship. They present a method-“ethnographic history”-that uses an explicit definition of culture to explore the past, which if one can jduge by the reaction of both anthropologists and historians is different enough from traditional approaches to draw a great deal of positive attention and comment. “Ethnographic history,” nevertheless, is not, I believe, the final rung on the ladder to Phase I1 we need as historical archaeologists. Wallace utilizes only documentary sources in his reconstruction of Rockdale and its history; indeed, even the selection of documents is narrowed by the theoretical stand. Isaac seems on the surface to be more holistic giving the reader insightful thick descriptions of mature colonial Virginia that include dance, music, architecture (exterior and interior) and landscape. These images on closer examination dissolve because there is an almost exclusive primacy of documents over other sources in his Ethnographic History research. He really does not use archaeology, material culture or even the illustrative sources The second rung on the scaffolding is now under (engravings, paintings) in a convincing style. His construction by a few scholars including social documentary sources, like Wallace’s, are also anthropologists and social historians. Rhys Isaac peculiar in their selection. The Transformation of 40 Virginia is predominately based on a very limited number of classic, personal documents that “speak” to the researcher seeking an emic analysis. Landon Carter’s diary is a fine internal example, while the journal of Philip Fithian, a good external, indeed ethnohistoric, example. In a similar manner Rockdale is constructed on the rich correspondence, diaries and personal papers of its 19th century local elites. Delimitation of the evidential sources is directly related to the mentalist, delimited definition of culture chosen for doing “ethnographic history.” Such a selection is productive as the success of these two volumes demonstrate; nevertheless, a mentalist, actor-centered definition of culture, like the historical tradition of scholarship, passes over sources such as the archaeological record. “Ethnographic history,” which is still in its formative stage, moves us forward but its basic elements need substantial readjustment. Borrowing a phrase from the Department of American Civilization at Penn, I would suggest that “historic ethnography” is more amenable to our interests as archaeologists. Historic Ethnography “Historic ethnography” would involve the following three elements: (1) the recognition that culture comes to us in history in the form of “packages,” functional units with temporal and spatial boundaries, not as disembodied variables or processes, nor decontextualized research topics (e.g., class conflict, women in history, urbanism’s influence on ethnicity). Context is the key to producing ethnography, synchronic or historic, and a return to an earlier partially functional anthropological image of culture is long overdue, (2) the culture concept utilized must be consistent and holistic on two levels: (a) it must not arbitrarily delimit culture to only symbolic or only material phenomena; technology, economy, sociopolitical structures and ideology are all equally aspects of culture, (b) if culture is not equal to people or only human mental processes, then it exists in all data sources and the relative strengths HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22 and weaknesses of these sources are unknowable from case to case. “Historic ethnography” must give equal attention to the archaeological and the documentary records, and possibly other sources (oral history, contemporary ethnography or ethnoarchaeology). This is where “ethnographic history” falls short and although a lack of familiarity with differing data bases is a partial explanation so is the selection of a limited definition of culture, (3) and, finally, “historic ethnography’’ must involve the explicit presentation of a theoretical position and explain how it is being operationalized as a research design. Historical archaeologists must simultaneously analyze both the archaeology and the textual sources from an anthropological perspective. The combining of these different data sources will enable us to at least attempt “historic ethnography” and move historical archaeology out of Phase I. It is indicative that almost all current archaeological reports assume a final format that divides into an archaeology section, a history section (if it is present at all), and a section on methodology. It is necessary that an adequate statement is offered on how the researcher handled the archaeological data and a parallel statement (almost always lacking) on how the documents were handled, to get us to the point of a final culture historical or processual synthesis. Yet at the point where the historical archaeologist should be displaying a higher level of his or her anthropologicaltraining the report stops. It is as though a social historian, such as Borchert, divided his final monograph into: Part 1, historical conclusions based on documents written on white paper, Part 2, historical conclusions based on documents written on yellow paper; general conclusions, none. “Historic ethnography” can not be written unless an anthropological analysis of the archival sources has been undertaken first with commitments of time and effort equal to what goes into the excavation, analysis and synthesis of the archaeological data. A Question of Scale The natural unit for “historic ethnography” is the “community” or some subunit of the commu- ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS nity, and yet it is now recognized, because of researchers such as Eric Wolf, Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernand Braudel, that culture appears on a number of different historic-functional scales ranging from the individual as a member of a cultural tradition to “world systems.” All of these cultural levels can only exist if manifested in the material realm. Therefore, all scales are present in the archaeological record and historical archaeology can explore the entire range. However, there is a basic problem which is relative and perhaps absolute. You do not dig up the state of Georgia, unless you are William Tecumseh Sherman; you do not excavate on a global level. For the time being, the unit of study must be the community (the site) or some smaller subunit. “Community” does not, at the same time, imply a total, functioning society but rather a historically integrated cultural unit. Thus a fur trading post, a frontier fort, a lumbering camp, or the Merrimack Corporation in 19th century Lowell, with its factories and housing, are as much “communities” as a Puritan village. This specificity of focus may be absolute in that historical archaeology will always make its major contribution at the site level of analysis. Certainly there is no way to approach a higher scale, a higher historically connected scale, a region for example, until several “historic ethnographies” have been produced within its boundaries. 41 cal archaeologist is specialized on piantation-slave archaeology, it is absolutely necessary that the current literature on the subject, most of which comes from the pens of historians, be controlled. There is little reciprocity because historical archaeologists have yet to produce much in the way of final cultural syntheses which would interest other scholars. More specifically it may be possible to compare individual “historic ethnographies” with work produced by historians, especially social and economic historians, on specific types of communities. Such comparisons are not ideal because the units will not be based on the same range of data; however, such comparisons will allow a more rapid movement of the field toward Phase 111as the archaeologist awaits the creation of plural “historic ethnographies” on a given community type. As I opened this paper with a recognition of the two major traditions of scholarship, the historical and the social scientific, I would like to conclude by referring to an even broader division. I place the research of all scientists (social and physical) and all historians into a category of “objective scholarship.” I know the work “objective” is not very popular today, but this is a restorative polemic. I have already urged old fashion holism, a return to functionalism, so why not objectivity, and that is what I mean-an attempt to gain a neutral, objective understanding of reality, especially human reality to the degree that it is humanly possible. This perspective is in contrast to a humanistic point of view-not particularly concerned with being neutral or even objective but rather an attempt to Phase Ill-Historic Ethnology gain an emotional understanding, or perhaps it “Historic ethnology” or comparative studies, a would be better to say appreciation, of reality, goal frequently discussed by historical archaeolo- especially human reality. It is necessary to keep gists, will only be possible when there are similar these two purposes separate during research. As units to compare. If the division between a social Stanley South has so aptly put it, he writes poetry scientific tradition and a historical tradition in and digs science (archaeology) but does not congeneral scholarship is recognized this does not fuse the two. Yet even this ultimate division is not mean that the division is absolute. There is a absolute. For archaeologists they connect at the methodological linkage but that commonality is all end and at the beginning. Once historical archaeology has produced sometoo frequently exaggerated. Source analysis is not complex and can be easily learned by doing. A thing worthwhile to general scholarship, which has more significant cross-fertilization involves the yet to happen, these “historic ethnographies” may secondary scholarly literature being successfully indeed be used to enhance the heritage of nations, produced by historians. If, for example, a histori- ethnic groups or other divisions of humanity. 42 Nevertheless, all of science, social science, history, anthropology and archaeology have at their most basic level a bedrock of humanistic support. We do not do anthropologyor archaeology because we hope to uncover the six great laws of culture but simply because it is enjoyable to do archaeology. As Stuart Piggott, the English prehistorian, pointed out, there is a “romance to archaeology.” The message of this paper is that as anthropology there is an equal mystery, romance and potential richness to the document. No one will or should do our archival research for us and it is only after the first generation of true historical archaeologists, the younger people currently enrolled in our graduate programs, take the place and surplant us retreaded prehistorians who currently dominate the discipline, many of whom like their social anthropological colleagues, enjoy floating on canoes between the Trobriand Islands, or sitting in pits at Lindenmeier, or having intimate relationships with gorillas in East Africa, but simply do not love archival dust as they love the field dirt under their fingernails; it is it only after this generational shift occurs that a fully anthropological historical archaeology will emerge and take its place within general scholarship. HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22 nography” followed by comparative studies will help to reestablish a culture historic core to both historical and prehistoric archaeology. REFERENCES BINFORD, LEWISR. 1968 Archaeological Perspectives. In New Perspectives in Archaeology, edited by Sally R. and Lewis R. Binford, pp. 5-32. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago. BORCHERT, JAMES 1980 Alley Life in Washington. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. DUNNELL, ROBERTC. 1986 Five Decades of American Archaeology. In American Archaeology Past and Future, edited by David J. Meltzer, Don D. Fowler and Jeremy A. Sabloff, pp. 23-49. Published for the Society for American Archaeology by the Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. GRIFFIN, JOHNW. 1958 End Products of Historic Sites Archaeology. In Symposium on Role of Archaeology in Historical Research, edited by John L. Cotter, pp. 1-6. Reprinted as Chapter 6 in Historical Archaeology: A Guide to Substantive and Theoretical Contributions, ed. Robert L. Schuyler (1978), pp. 20-23. Baywood Publishing Company, Farmingdale, New Yo&. ISAAC, RHYS A New Culture History Two years before John Cotter offered the first course in historical archaeology in Philadelphia, John W. Griffin (1958: 1-6) issued a little heeded call for a form of culture history in historical archaeology. Almost thirty years later this plea must be resurrected and repeated. “Culture history” has been given an almost fatally negative connotation by processual archaeologists (Binford 1968) who arbitrarily and erroneously limited it to time-space systematics (cf., Dunnell 1986). If culture history is recognized in its original entirety, which after W. W. Taylor included both chronicle and the reconstruction and interpretation of past lifeways, then the development of “historic eth- 1982 The Transformation of Virginia 1740-I79O. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. THURMAN, MELBURN D. 1982 Plains Indian Winter Counts and the New Ethnohistory. Plains Anthropologist 27 (97): 239-43. WALLACE, ANTHONY F. C. 1972 Rockdale, the Growth of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. WOLF,ERICR. 1982 Europe and the People Without History. University of California Press, Berkeley. ROBERTL. SCHUYLER UNIVERSITYMUSEUM UNIVERSITYOF PENNSYLVANIA PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 1g1o4