Abstract
Oral-historical methodology is briefly analysed and explained based on the author’s personal experience in the field over 30 years. The definition and uses of structured and unstructured interviews are detailed. The emotional aspects of interviewing are recognised. The problem sof how to address questions of credibility, transferability, dependability or confirm ability are examined. Examples of how to juxtapose different sources with oral evidence to support an historical interpretation are given. Following Alison Wylie’s suggestions, use of ‘networks of resistances’ and ‘concatenations of inferences’ is recommended. In summary, personal narrative is seen as an elegant tool which enriches the history of archaeology. Oral recollections can recreate and capture the volume, silence, emotion and personal meaning of events. The Personal Histories Project is introduced as a way to create new sources and oral-history archives for future students, teachers and researchers.
Highlights
Most handbooks and textbooks on oral-historical practice and principles written in the English language (Guba Egon & Lincoln 1981, Humphries 1984, Perks 1992,Perks & Thompson 2006, Ritchie2011, Thompson 2000, or Yow 2005) include the following simple instructions
In 1950, a divisive controversy burst open within the University of Cambridge Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology
I found, years ago, that secondary, published material did not yet exist for the histories I was investigating; unpublished sources had not been located when I began to investigate the history of academic British archaeology
Summary
Most handbooks and textbooks on oral-historical practice and principles written in the English language (Guba Egon & Lincoln 1981, Humphries 1984, Perks 1992,Perks & Thompson 2006, Ritchie2011, Thompson 2000, or Yow 2005) include the following simple instructions. Change the transcript and re-record or destroy the recording if the narrator wishes These simple points are important and an ethical beginning but do not explain how an historical argument is constructed; nor do most manuals discuss the deeper issues of the relationship which develops during an interview and how that relationship affects the oral historian and the person who is interviewed, and how oral-history practice may help to uncover new historical sources. The interviewee, the narrator, controls the direction of the interview and follows whatever he or she wishes to record. I hope to answer those queries by presenting case studies In this short article, I use examples from my oral-histories research to show how historians of archaeology might use oral-historical evidence judiciously to enhance the stories they tell. I will discuss briefly the emotional commitments which are oral history’s great strength
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