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Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology
- Source :
- American Antiquity. 60:199-217
- Publication Year :
- 1995
- Publisher :
- Cambridge University Press (CUP), 1995.
-
Abstract
- Archaeology is poised to play a pivotal role in the reconfiguration of historical anthropology. Archaeology provides not only a temporal baseline that spans both prehistory and history, but the means to study the material remains of ethnic laborers in pluralistic colonial communities who are poorly represented in written accounts. Taken together, archaeology is ideally suited for examining the multicultural roots of modern América. But before archaeology’s full potential to contribute to culture contact studies can be realized, we must address several systemic problems resulting from the separation of “prehistoric” and “historical” archaeology into distinct subfields. In this paper, I examine the implications of increasing temporal/regional specialization in archaeology on (1) the use of historical documents in archaeological research, (2) the study of long-term culture change, and (3) the implementation of pan-regional comparative analyses.
- Subjects :
- Archeology
History
education.field_of_study
060101 anthropology
060102 archaeology
media_common.quotation_subject
Museology
Population
06 humanities and the arts
Historical anthropology
Colonialism
Culture change
Prehistory
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Multiculturalism
Ethnology
0601 history and archaeology
education
Systemic problem
Historical archaeology
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 23255064 and 00027316
- Volume :
- 60
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- American Antiquity
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........1324c251793e91602d0c9f81bc32ac9a