KATHLEEN A.
DEAGAN Schuyler in his 1979 volume, Historical Archae-
Neither History Nor Prehistory:
the Questions that Count in
Historical Archaeology
ABSTRACT
Historical archaeology’s singular and unique strength
among the social sciences is its simultaneous access to
multiple categories of evidence bearing upon the same
processes or events in past human behavior (either imme-
diately or remotely in the past). Although this has been
obvious for nearly two decades, historical archaeology has
not produced the original and unparalleled insights into
human cultural behavior or evolution that we might expect
to result from the unique perspective and data base of the
field. We have instead tended to weakly reproduce or
“test” insights and principles resulting from history or
prehistoric archaeology. Both the questions we have asked
and the methods we have used to answer them have been
grounded in fields other than historical archaeology and
have generally ignored its special perspective.
It is the premise of this paper that there are potential
contributions of historical archaeology not duplicatable by
any other field. Our present operational and methodological
procedures, however, (grounded in prehistory and history)
are neither appropriate nor adequate to deal with them. This
will be explored through the issues of defining the right
questions for historical archaeology, and identifying the
appropriate approaches to employ in answering them.
One of the signal intellectual events in the
development of historical archaeology as a field of
inquiry took place twenty years ago at the 1967
Conference on Historic Sites Archaeology orga-
nized by Stan South. The forum on the identity of
the field that took place there represents some of
our earliest efforts at self-definitionas a discipline.
Happily, many of the participants in that forum are
here with us today, as, less happily, are many of
the issues-still unresolved-that were raised two
decades ago.
I have no intention of reviewing that exchange
here, particularly since the questions of self-
definition and intellectual orientation raised there
were admirably restated and summarized by Bob
ology. Certain of the questions themselves are
worth considering, however, because they con-
tinue to guide our self-perceptionsas scholars, and
this appears to have been a factor in the inhibition
of our intellectualdevelopment as a discipline. The
most pervasive of these questions was that of
whether historical archaeology developed from
history or from anthropology, with the underlying
issue of whether historical archaeology is essen-
tially historical, humanistic or scientific in its
orientation.
The issue of our parentage is perhaps less
dogmatic today that it was twenty years ago.
Historical archaeology is clearly the offspring of
both history and anthropology, inheriting the ca-
pability to address historical or scientific ques-
tions, and to use historical or scientific methods.
We share this capability with prehistoric archaeol-
ogy, and it must be acknowledged that both fields
have produced fine work in both the “historical”
and “anthropological” arenas. We have come to
recognize that “particularizing” and “general-
izing” approaches are not mutually exclusive
modes of inquiry within a discipline, and can work
together in the larger intellectual process of trying
to understand and explain human culture and
behavior in the past and in the present.
This mellowing effect has come about for a
number of reasons, not the least of which has been
change and dialogue among historians about their
own disciplinary definition and proper orientation.
We can find statements about history ranging from
the contention in Barzun and Graff’s widely-used
textbook that history is strictly documentary nar-
rative (1985:253) to Fernand Braudel and the
Marxist-influenced Annales school’s position that
history is most valuable as the study of the longue
duree. or the very long-term cycles that describe
and explain “man in relation to his surroundings”
(Braudel 1980:3). In their approaches to the past
there is often little difference today among studies
in historical archaeology, cultural anthropology
and social history.
Certain intellectual advances that have occurred
since the emergence of historical archaeology have
additionally made us aware of the altered and
8 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22
interconnected nature of the modern world (that is,
the world after 1500). The work of Immanuel
Wallerstein (1974), Fernand Braudel (1974) and
Andre Gunder Frank (1967) have underscored the
necessity for more integrated approaches that tran-
scend traditional disciplinary boundaries. This has
had an obvious effect on our sense of alignment
and identity in historical archaeology since 1970,
in that a strict distinction between history and
anthropology now appears not only difficult, but
unproductive. This has occurred in other social
sciences as well, involved in the interdisciplinary
area studies that arose in the decade of the 1960s.
These studies forced an awareness among social
scientists (including historians) as to the scope and
methods of each other’s disciplines. As a result, a
number of synthetic studies of modem world
phenomena have blurred disciplinary lines and
impacted our thinking about the social sciences
(Braudel 1980, 1981, 1974; Wallerstein 1974;
Wolf 1982; Mintz 1985; Sahlins 1985). These
works seek to understand and/or explain the pro-
cesses by which cultural forms mediate social and
ecological relationships among human populations
in the post-1500 world, often through Marxian-
derived analyses of capitalism and its impacts.
Historical archaeology is clearly relevant in this
undertaking as the only discipline with both chron-
ological depth and access to the non-intentional
material by-products of life in modern times.
In order to realize our potential contributions in
this effort, however, we must recognize the fact
that we are not dealing with an extension of the
pre-1500 world in North America, but rather with
a very complex global system that cannot always
be effectively studied within the traditional con-
fines of a single discipline. Historical archaeol-
ogy’s obvious niche as a modern, synthetic field of
inquiry is in the study of the processes and inter-
relationshipsby which human social and economic
organization developed and evolved in the modern
world. We must first, however, develop concep-
tual and methodological tools that will allow us to
take advantage of our special capabilities. Only
then will we be able to both ask and answer
questions that count.
Given this topical and temporal niche, what can
historical archaeology contribute that cannot be
achieved by any other field of study? The answer,
obviously, lies in historical archaeology’s unique
capability of gaining simultaneous access to the
past through multiple, independent categories of
evidence, a data base characterized by Schuyler as
“the spoken word, the written word, observed
behavior and preserved behavior” (1977). Our
special purview therefore is most appropriately
those issues related to life in the post-1500 world
that require both testimony and material by-
products to be accurately understood.
This special attribute of historical archaeology
has been recognized and discussed from the earli-
est days of the field (Harrington 1955; Deetz 1968;
Schuyler 1970), most frequently in the use of
simultaneous “emic” and “etic” statements about
the same past circumstances as an index to the
veracity of the documentary record. These multi-
ple contexts have also been used to gain insight
into past perception or cognition (Deetz 1968,
1977; Leone 1977b; Deagan 1983:264-65;
Yentsch 1983). In the context of the modern
world, this simultaneous access to documentary
and material evidence provides the most direct
path to recovering and understanding economic
organization and the social processes related to it.
This has been proposed by Leone as “reading
society through its production” (1977a:xx) and
demonstrated by Rathje (1977) to be a workable
and effective approach. Somewhat puzzlingly,
however, historical archaeology has failed for the
most part to effectively integrate independent doc-
umentary and archaeological data to produce oth-
erwise unobtainable results. While there are, of
course, exceptions to this, such as the creative
integration of probate inventories by Deetz, Bow-
en and others (Deetz 1977; Bowen 1975), we have
in general tended to treat documentary and archae-
ological information as separate and non-over-
lapping categories of data, using one source (be it
archaeological or documentary) to reinforce or
refute the conclusions arrived at through the other
source.
Another common practice is the use of some
uncontrolled and often biased sample of the avail-
able documentary data base to help interpret the
NEITHER HISTORY NOR PREHISTORY
“meaning” of the archaeological remains. Al-
though this sometimes provides what we often call
“a richer picture of life in the past,” it does little
to take advantage of the real potentials of historical
archaeology, and produces little information that
probably could not have been acquired through a
more thorough examination of the historical doc-
umentation. The questions that count cannot be
answered by either historical or archaeological
data alone, or through simple comparison of the
two data categories.
New World colonialism, Western expansion,
the rise of capitalism and its myriad related issues
offer an important focus for modern historical
archaeology, and one that places it squarely within
the basic concerns of the social sciences (see
Leone 1977a). There are many issues that can only
be understood by reference to both documentary
and material accounts of past conditions, mostly
related to the development of new means of
production, accumulation, distribution and human
social organization. Slavery, imperialism, class
formation, cultural syncretism, the manifestation
of economic inequality among classes, consumer
choice behavior and accelerated environmental
degradation are a few of the related topics that can
be accurately described and understood only by a
historical archaeological approach (that is, through
the use of written testimony in conjunction with
material by-products). Some work in the field is
already turning successfully in this direction, such
as Lewis’ studies of the process of colonial frontier
expansion (1984); or Paynter’s account of the
transformation of New England society from a
peripheral area to a core participant in the world
economy (1982). Other studies attempt to under-
stand relationships between socio-economic and
market organizations by studying commodity
flows, price indices and consumer choices through
both documentary and material evidence (Miller
1980; Wise 1983; Spencer-Wood 1987). One can
also conceive of archaeological studies along the
lines of Mintz’s study of sugar (1985), tracing
material mechanisms by which economic and class
structures are reinforced and maintained.
Many potentially fruitful questions in American
historical archaeology are historical in a generic
9
sense, in that they either concentrate on a specific
time and place, or explain a particular circum-
stance by reference to historical developments.
There are many such questions that depend upon
the multiple evidence access of historical archae-
ology. One obvious and early-appreciatedexample
is the archaeology of slaves and other economi-
cally and socially disenfranchised groups (see
Schuyler 1976, 1980; Singleton 1985). Neither the
historical record nor the archaeological record
alone can serve to reconstruct the past lifeways of
such people, or to investigate their roles in the
complex, interconnected modern world. The ap-
plication of historical archaeology to traditionally
historical issues for which there is simply inade-
quate documentation constitutes a valid and impor-
tant focus in the field, and one that boasts the most
successful contributions of historical archaeology
to date.
Other questions appropriate to the unique capa-
bilities of historical archaelogy focus on under-
standing general cultural phenomena that tran-
scend specific time and space. A classic example
in which historical archaeology has taken a some-
what slow lead has been in the study of accultur-
ation. The obvious advantages of North American
contact period sites for understanding acculturation
and other kinds of contact-induced culture change
have often been pointed out, and were, in fact, the
focus of some of the earliest historical archaeology
in a social science vein (Deetz 1963; 1965). This
early promise has not been fully realized, how-
ever, as recent attempts to synthesize archaeolog-
ical contributions to contact issues have indicated
(Fitzhugh 1985:9; McEwan and Mitchem 1984).
This failure has in part been due to the application
of methodologies developed for prehistoric archae-
ology that give relatively little consideration to the
larger economic, technological, political and so-
cial milieus of contact period sites. We have not,
for example, developed principles of interpretation
that allow us to recognize “acculturation” in the
archaeological record, other than a vague idea that
the presence of European items on a non-Euro-
pean site (and vice-versa) reflects “accultura-
tion.”
This underscores that fact that although we can
10
ask “questions that count”, we cannot answer
them without a methodology specific to historical
archaeology. Certain elements of a methodology
for the recovery, analysis and ordering of historical
archaeological data have been developed, most
notably those of South (1977); Noel Hume (1969)
and Reitz and Scarry (1985). We have not devel-
oped a methodology specifically designed to take
advantage of the multiple categories of evidence in
historical archaeology, however, and this has cer-
tainly been a factor in the failure of the field to
realize its full potential. Much of the best recent
work on historical archaeological issues in the
modern world ultimately relies more heavily on
documentary, cartographic or geographical data
than on archaeological data in its interpretations
(cf. Lewis 1984; Paynter 1982).
Cogent arguments were offered in the early
years of the discipline’s existence to both support
and refute the proposition that historical archaeol-
ogy properly shares the methodology of prehistoric
archaeology, with the more or less simple addition
of documents (for a review and discussion of these
arguments, see Cleland and Fitting 1968). The
view of methodological unity with prehistory has
been highly appealing to the past and current
generation of archaeologistswho have been trained
overwhelmingly in anthropology departments that
traditionally concentrate on the study of prehistoric
or non-Western people. Most of us received our
methodological training in the context of prehis-
toric archaeology, and we learned to apply re-
search strategies and interpretive methods de-
signed to inform us about cultures in a pre-global
and pre-capitalistic world. The special domain of
historical archaeology in the Americas, however,
that of the post-1500 world system, requires addi-
tional and sometimes different ways of organizing
research and interpreting the results. The classifi-
catory, typological and material origins concerns
of prehistoric archaeology, for example, are not
directly transferable to historical archaeology,
since the intended form and function of much of
historic material culture is well documented, as is
its origin, price, and market distribution.
The fact that we are, for the most part, studying
our own society also makes-or should make-a
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, VOLUME 22
difference in both the questions we ask and in our
methods for answering them (see Schuyler 1970,
1976; Leone 1977a). It is in some cases possible to
refer to our own experience to functionally and
meaningfully interpret the material world (such as
the case of a rosary, for example). It is possible
that our prehistoric archaeology heritage has
slowed down the process of going beyond accepted
methodologies to develop others-like South’s-
that are specifically appropriate to the concerns
and capabilities of historical archaeology.
One area in which historical archaeology has
begun to realize its unique potentials is that of
basic research in archaeology, or the development
of middle-range theory to link our observations of
the archaeological record to a reasonable approxi-
mation of the past events that formed that record.
The combined application of documentary and
material evidence has been successful in the devel-
opment of principles for the archaeological recog-
nition of normal stylistic evolution (Deetz and
Dethlefson 1967; South 1972; Cleland 1972); eco-
nomic stress (Rathje 1977); residence patterns
(Deetz 1965) and variability in economic status
(Miller 1980; Otto 1984; Deagan 1983).
There are many other concerns that could and
should be considered in any discussion of the
questions that count in historical archaeology.
There is not, unfortunately, time to consider them
in detail here. One particularly troublesome issue
is the potential importance of historical archaeol-
ogy in service to other fields of inquiry, such as the
“handmaiden to history” role of documentary
supplementation and verification; or the “hand-
maiden to prehistoric archaeology” role of middle-
range theory development; or the “handmaiden to
preservation” role of recovering buried evidence
for structures and activities to be portrayed to the
public. All of these interests depend on historical
archaeology for access to the necessary data base.
Are these legitimate goals of our field, or ancillary
service activities? These are very real concerns
that cannot be ignored, or in the spirit of scholarly
collaboration, rejected.
In conclusion, it seems evident that the ques-
tions that count in historical archaeology are those
which only our unique, multi-evidential approach
NEITHER HISTORY NOR PREHISTORY
can answer. These, for North American archaeol-
ogists, are grounded in the study of the complex,
post-1500 world system and the forms of human
organization and interaction within it regardless of
whether these problems have a traditional identifi-
cation as either ‘‘historical’’ or “scientific.” In
order to develop our potential to contribute in a
singular way to the study of the modern world, we
must identify and focus upon those issues that
depend on simultaneous access to both written and
material evidence. We also have to develop our
own specific methodologies to integrate and use
those categories of evidence. We are not histori-
ans, nor are we prehistorians, but we are rather a
modem discipline with our own specific focus that
can make otherwise unobtainable contributions to
the study of the modern world.
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