Download Archaeological Remains, Documents, and

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-
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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.
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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