Perception and Conceptions: Historical Archaeology in the East Midlands and East Africa in the 1950's

Summary

This paper reviews the birth of Historical Archaeology in the 1950's at a time when archaeology as a university and research discipline was in its infancy. Archaeology  was then largely conceived as embracing prehistoric, Classical and the archaeology of great civilizations. Though historical archaeology was undertaken in a limited form it was shunned professionally as it was felt that the archaeological method was less relevant than an historical or antiquarian material approach. This papers reviews attitudes to Anglo Saxon/Danish, Medieval, Industrial and second millennium AD African archaeology, as experienced by the presenter, that were only later recognized as valid and separate fields. The approaches of archaeologists trained in Britain, of whom Ivor Noel Hume was the most outstanding, helped define the discipline and a chronology largely based on British material culture that provided the basis for Historical Archaeology as we now know it.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013   •
• History, archaeology, and memory work in African contexts

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 105