Wholes, Halves, and Vacant Quarters: Ethnohistory and the Historical Method

Abstract

At regular intervals since 1972, ethnohistory has been treated in the Annual Review of Anthropology (Carmack, 1972; Krech, 1991; Spores, 1980). It is particularly relevant for historical archaeology if one accepts Wood’s (1990:81) definition of ethnohistory as ‘‘the use of historical documents and historical method in anthropological research.’’ Ethnohistory is in many ways essential to historical archaeological practice, as it provides the methods for critically analyzing and synthesizing documentary sources used by historical archaeologists, whether complementary or contradictory to the archaeological findings. ‘‘Text-aided’’ archaeology (Little 1992) has many practitioners who research topics from many time periods. Ethnohistory in the last decade signals important changes paralleled within anthropology and history. As Wylie has observed (1996:255), ‘‘history is rewritten each [academic] generation.’’ Ethnohistory continues to expand, while underscoring the importance of the underlying tenets of the enterprise—historical method. As considered here, ethnohistory draws upon the disciplines of cartography, geography, linguistics, ethnology, cognition/perception, archaeology, and history, while using a combination of the scientific method and the historical method (Fig. 1) and the lens of anthropology. The increasing importance of the archaeological record, in conjunction with historical documents, witnesses a significant reemergence of method and data in archaeology (particularly historical archaeology) and ethnohistory (Feinman, 1997; Nassaney and Johnson, 2000). Papers in ethnohistory since 1990 also show attention to archaeology and cognitive/perceptual analyses. This discussion will use two examples from northern Great Plains ethnohistory to make observations on method, theory, foundations, interdisciplinarity, and continuities among researchers in observations and concerns over time in northern Great Plains ethnohistory, with suggestions for future research directions. Despite this emphasis on the ethnohistory of the North American Great Plains region, this chapter has materials of interest to historical archaeologists working elsewhere in North America, and for that matter, the world. Interdisciplinary scholars, such as ethnohistorians, must retain the context of the findings and methods they borrow from other fields while applying these methods and findings to new research questions and analyses. Ethnohistorical analysis and research, while following precepts of the underpinning method and theory, necessarily also is an interpretive—and thereby, personal—exercise. Ethnohistorians and researchers in other fields of interest to ethnohistorians have been framing their research and drawing upon methods and findings in an ever-widening circle of specialized topics.With increasing sophistication of question framing and analysis comes a need for multidimensional investigation. Table 1 shows the variety of topics considered by ethnohistorians and of interest in northern Great Plains ethnohistory since about 1990. The two ethnohistory examples used here will show how later researchers may revisit and reinterpret P.R. Picha e-mail: ppicha@nd.gov