Symposium on Role of Archaeology in Historical Research, Summary and Analysis

Archaeology for the anthropologist is a technique. The journal of the Society, called Historical Archaeology—probably a slick paper affair publishing summaries of projects and achievements, with illustrations. Ivor Noel Hume has viewed the status and problems of the archaeologist as historical investigator with the detachment of one entering the field in America from England. Both Kenneth Kidd and Hubert Smith have pointed to the perspective which the archaeologist can give to the culture of the European immigrants, beginning with the Age of Discovery and exploration and ultimately colonization. The simple, closely-dated trash pit, ever the piece de resistance of the archaeologist, must once more be sought to give diagnostic objects, even while whole houses and villages remain untouched. Archaeology, then, is a technique of investigation that can be used not only by anthropologists but by historians and architects. Thus, the archaeologist who devotes his efforts toward the historical field must, become competent in historical research and know its methods.

Archaeology · Geography · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History