Historic Archaeology

Topics

• Introduction to Historical Archaeology and its Sub-fields
• The Theoretical Roots of Historical Archaeology
• Historic Site Commemoration
• Relativism and its impact upon Historical Archaeology
• Humanism, Political Ideology and appeals to the aesthetic
• The Crisis of Identity: History or Anthropology?
• Conflict between Traditional and “New Archaeologists”
• Historical Archaeology as a Testing Ground for New Archaeology?
• testing serriation, and the concepts of tradition versus horizon
• integration of mathematically-based interpretation (mean dating methods)
• Case Study: Fort Necessity
• Historical Archaeology and the Processualists
• Pattern Recognition and Stanley South
• Artifact Demo: History and Material Culture of the Canadian Fur Trade
• Understanding World View: James Deetz, Henry Glassie
• Artifact Demo: Nail technology as a date marker
• Recovering Mind: Mark Leone and the Structuralists
• Semiotics and Non-verbal Communication
• Case Study: Rocky Mountain Fort and Brandon House: academic versus CRM archaeology
• Demo: Clay smoking pipes
• Artifact Demo: Arms, gun flints and ammunition continued
• The Archaeology of European Exploration, Colonialism, Slavery, etc
• Interpretation of Historic Documentation in Historic Archaeology
• Case Study: Glass beads and containerware