Historiography (2001)

Abstract

Historical works dealing with archaeology have been written to entertain the public, commemorate important archaeologists and research projects, instruct students in the basic concepts of the discipline, justify particular programmes or ideas, disparage the work of rivals, and, most recently, try to resolve theoretical problems. These studies have taken the form of autobiographies, biographies, accounts of the development of the discipline as a whole, investigations of specific institutions or projects, and examinations of particular theories and approaches. They have used the analytical techniques of intellectual and social history and sought to treat their subject objectively, critically, hermeneutically, and polemically. Over time, historical studies have become more numerous, diversified, and sophisticated. Histories of archaeology are being written for all parts of the world, and in a growing number of countries, a large amount of material is being produced at local as well as national levels. There is no end in sight to the growing interest in this form of research. The history of archaeology has been written mainly by professional archaeologists, who have no training in history or the history of science, and by popularizers. Only a small number of these studies have been produced by professional historians. Archaeology has attracted little attention from historians of science, despite its considerable interest to philosophers of science. This lack of interest is hard to understand since the difficulties inherent in inferring human behaviour from archaeological evidence make archaeology an ideal discipline for addressing many of the issues of objectivity that are currently of interest to historians of science. The earliest use of the history of archaeology appears to have been for didactic purposes. In the mid-nineteenth century, the physicist Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to purge American archaeology of useless speculation and to encourage an interest in factual research. To do this, he commissioned Samuel F. Haven, the librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, to write a critical historical review of studies of American prehistory titled Archaeology of the United States (1856). To improve the quality of American archaeology, Henry also published reports on developments in the discipline in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, which was widely distributed in North America.