Journal Article

Historical archaeology at the interstices between archaeology and history

Predovnik, Katarina

2023

Overview

This paper explores the relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and history through the lens of historical archaeology. This is not a unified subdiscipline and has indeed been defined in various ways. Here, the term will be used as a shorthand for (later) medieval, post-medieval and contemporary archaeologies. Historical archaeology is first and foremost archaeology focusing on material remains and producing knowledge claims about the past (history) from things. But it can complement and confront the data gleaned from the material sources with other types of evidence (textual, pictorial, oral), so it is an archaeology with texts. This represents a methodological and epistemological challenge. An uncritical reliance on textual information over the material has often been warned against as “the tyranny of the historical record”. Many (historical) archaeologists have been inspired by various historiographical concepts and approaches, such as cultural history, the Annales school of social and economic history, Braudel’s concept of the longue-durée, the history of the everyday (Alltagsgeschichte), and microhistory. Conversely, the knowledge produced by archaeologists tends to be disregarded by most historians. This is unfortunate, as the material evidence offers important insights into past lifeworlds and should not be ignored. Članek obravnava razmerje med arheologijo in zgodovinopisjem z vidika historične arheologije. Ta ni enovito znanstveno podpodročje in jo je mogoče opredeliti na različne načine. V tem članku izraz historična arheologija zaradi priročnosti uporabljamo kot krovno poimenovanje za (poznejšo) srednjeveško in posrednjeveško arheologijo ter arheologijo sodobnosti. Historična arheologija je prvenstveno arheologija, saj se osredotoča na materialne ostanke in gradi znanstvena spoznanja o preteklosti (zgodovino) iz stvari. Vendar lahko podatke, pridobljene iz materialnih virov, dopolnjuje in sooča z drugimi viri (besedilnimi, slikovnimi, ustnimi), zatorej je arheologija z besedili. To predstavlja metodološki in epistemološki izziv. Mnogi opozarjajo na nevarnost »tiranije zgodovinskih virov«, nekritičnega zanašanja na besedilne informacije in dajanja prednosti le-tem v primerjavi z materialnimi podatki.  Številne (historične) arheologe so navdihnili različni koncepti in pristopi iz zgodovinopisja, kot so denimo kulturna zgodovina, analovska šola družbene in ekonomske zgodovine, Braudelov koncept dolgega trajanja, zgodovina vsakdana (Alltagsgeschichte) in mikrozgodovina. Obratno pa večina zgodovinarjev spoznanj arheologov ne upošteva. To je vredno obžalovanja, saj materialni viri ponujajo pomembne uvide v nekdanje življenjske svetove in jih ne bi smeli prezreti.   

• Publisher: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
• Subject: Archaeology / History / Medieval period / Middle Ages