Historical archeology
Historical archeology is a sub-area of the archaeological sciences / archeology . In contrast to prehistoric archeology, it focuses on epochs with so-called “dense tradition”, especially written sources. The parallel transmission of material archaeological sources and written transmission is the methodological criterion for historical archeology. Historical archeology uses the same range of sources and methods as prehistory and early history / prehistoric archeology. However, it deals with other types of sources (written sources, image sources, oral history) and also includes their specific methods.
Temporal and factual boundaries
The term is still used differently in the diverse traditions of archaeological subjects around the world. This also applies to the German-speaking area.
- Historical archeology means the archeology of cultures that have written self-reports or are in the focus of these (Andren 1998);
- Historical archeology refers to the period from around 1500 to the present, particularly in North America and Europe (Gaimster 2009).
- Historical archeology is a generic term for the archeology of the Middle Ages and modern times in Europe (Frommer 2007; Morgen et al. 2009);
According to Anders Andrén (1998), there are completely different absolute temporal starting points for historical archeology around the world, which ultimately correspond to the appearance of literate cultures. It is important to distinguish between phases and regions in which the written and pictorial sources predominantly offer a partial view (e.g. early history) and phases with dense sources, which usually reflect an interior view of the culture under study. According to A. Andrén, historical archeology includes very different archeologies such as ancient American studies, classical archeology or medieval archeology . His approach can be called methodological-phenomenological and aims at structural features.
In the Anglo-American area (Gaimster 2009), the term appears in particular with the establishment of the Society of Historical Archeology (SHA; 1967) and the Australian Society of Historical Archeology (ASHA; 1970) on the one hand and the Society of Post-Medieval Archeology (SPMA; 1967) on the other hand. While the contacts between Europe and the "New World" as well as New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region played an important role for the SHA and ASHA, especially at the time of colonization, the SPMA initially focused on the period between 1500 and 1750 resp. the beginning of the industrial revolution. In recent times (Gaimster 2009) these time boundaries have almost been dissolved and the field of work has been expanded to the present day. This creates the link to “Contemporary archeology” (Buchli / Lucas 2001; Holtorf 2009).
The problems of demarcation resulting from A. Andren's definition, especially in relation to classical archeology, have led to the fact that historical archeology also includes the period of the Middle Ages and modern times (in Europe) (Müller 2008; Mogren et al. 2009).
In comparison, it can be said that the content and methodological version by A. Andren provides the global framework for what historical archeology is and the other two boundaries thus represent “special cases”. In the global perspective, “historical archeology” ultimately focuses on the comparability of structures and processes (Morgen et Al 2009) and is not narrowly defined as “Eurocentric”.
Germany
In German-speaking countries, the term is only slowly gaining acceptance. Mostly it is equated with modern archeology . Organizations such as the “German Society for Archeology of the Middle Ages and the Modern Era”, but also chairs such as those in Bamberg, Halle or Tübingen, initially understood the archeology of the modern era as an extension of the archeology of the Middle Ages. The term “historical archeology” was taken up in Tübingen as a generic term for archeology of the Middle Ages and modern times as a whole. But mostly the early modern times, the 16th to 18th centuries, are in the foreground. Contemporary archeology, which carries archaeological methods and questions into the late 20th and 21st centuries, has only become more common in German-speaking countries since the 1990s. In addition to university chairs - especially in Vienna and Innsbruck - and projects in archaeological monument preservation (e.g. in North Rhine-Westphalia or Berlin-Brandenburg), contemporary historical topics are primarily on the agenda of art and monument preservation. The reasons for these separations and the hesitant reception of the term “historical archeology” are diverse. They are due not least to the historically grown division of archaeological monument preservation as well as architectural and art monument preservation. This also results in a terminology oriented more towards epochs (Middle Ages / Modern Times) than towards structural features.
While an extensive discussion about the term and understanding of medieval archeology was held in the German-speaking area, especially in the 1980s, corresponding considerations were only made quite late in the modern era. In addition to smaller contributions by Ingolf Ericsson (1995; 2002), R. Schreg (2007) dealt with modern archeology. While both delimit modern archeology as a discipline, S. Frommer (2007) conducted a methodological and substantive examination of the term "historical archeology", which can also be understood as an attempt to differentiate it from prehistoric archeology. So far there has been a lack of clear temporal, spatial and content-related delimitations of the term "historical archeology" in German-speaking archeology. The term is often used in a pragmatic sense. In this way one tries to avoid cumbersome constructs such as prehistoric archeology or archeology of the early Middle Ages, archeology of the Middle Ages ( medieval archeology ) and modern times. Historical archeology can also be used in the sense of a holistic understanding of archeology, because archaeological sub-disciplines such as industrial archeology , garden archeology ( garden monument preservation ), "battlefield archeology " or "execution archeology" use the same or similar methods, questions and sources.
Historical Archeology
Historical archeology in the English-speaking world differs from German research, which has so far only had little profile, primarily in its understanding of history and in the methodology of source synthesis (cf. Schreg 2007). In American Historical Archeology, the influences of the theoretical discussion clearly emerge. From Processual Archeology comes the approach that Historical Archeology can make a decisive contribution to the development of archaeological methods in addition to ethno-archeology and experimental archeology. The Postprocessual Archeology has v. a. highlighted the relation to the actors and recipients of research. A representative example here is the discussion about the perspective of the African Americans, which was initially largely forgotten in a Europe-centered perspective.
literature
- Anders Andrén (1998). Between Artifacts and Texts. Historical Archeology in Global Perspective. New York: Plenary Press.
- Michael Baales , Ralf Blank , Eva Cichy, Jörg Orschiedt (2010): Archaeological investigations into a shot down English Lancaster bomber from the Second World War near Hagen, in: Accompanying volume to the state exhibition Archeology in North Rhine-Westphalia in the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne, Mainz, Pp. 308-311.
- Victor Buchli; Gavin Lucas, (2001). Archaeologies of the contemporary Past. London: Routledge.
- Ingolf Ericsson (1995). Modern Archeology. Aims and delimitation of a young discipline in archaeological science. Excavations and Finds 40, pp. 7-13.
- Ingolf Ericsson (2002). New research on the Middle Ages and modern times. The rise of a research discipline. In: people times spaces. Archeology in Germany. Stuttgart: Theiss, pp. 362-364.
- Sören Frommer (2007). Historical archeology. Attempt of a methodological foundation of archeology as a science of history. Büchenbach: Faustus.
- David Gaimster (2009). International handbook of historical archeology. New York: Springer.
- Cornelius Holtorf ed. (2009). Contemporary archaeologies. Excavating now. Frankfurt am Main u. a .: Long.
- Mats Mogren, et al. (2009). Triangular ring. Historisk arkeologi vidgar fälten. Lund: Universitet.
- Ulrich Müller (2008). People - times - spaces. Historical archeology between structuralism and historical anthropology. In: Biermann, Felix; Müller, Ulrich; Terberger, Thomas ed. Watching things. Archeology and History in the Baltic Sea Region 2. Rahden: Leidorf, pp. 75-82.
- Rainer Schreg (2007). Early Modern Archeology. The contribution of archeology in the face of increasing written sources. Mitt. Dt. Ges. Arch. Middle Ages a. Modern Times 18, pp. 9-20 ( online ).
- Theune , Claudia (2009). Holistic research on the Middle Ages and modern times. In: S. Brather (Ed.), Historia Archaeologica. Festschrift for Heiko Steuer on his 70th birthday. Real Lexicon of Germ. Classical Antiquities Supplementary Volume 70. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, pp. 753-762.