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Sibling Rivalry? The Intersection of Archeology and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Peter Robertshaw
Peter Robertshaw*
Affiliation:
California State University–San Bernardino
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Extract

Communication between the practitioners of the two disciplines [history and archeology] is still often difficult.

Five years ago Jan Vansina asked historians whether archeologists were their siblings. The question seems to have been rhetorical, since Vansina himself offered the opinion that, at least “when archaeologists offer specific reconstructions of history, as they often do in their site reports, they are historians.” However, he also admitted that archeology “is a discipline in its own right.” Since no historians were sufficiently riled by these assertions to offer a response to Vansina's article, we must assume that archeologists are accepted, though not necessarily with open arms, in the family of historians. But what did archeologists say about their adoption? Nothing it appears, though perhaps many archeological practitioners missed Vansina's article because it was published in an historical, not an archeological, journal. I stumbled across the article a couple of years ago and plunged in with both anticipation and trepidation. Which archaeologist could resist reading a critique of his discipline by a respected historian? My feelings turned out to be justified. I was both excited and a little dismayed by what I read, though I was relieved to find that my own archeological efforts in Uganda were favorably viewed by the eminence grise.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 27 , January 2000 , pp. 261 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2000

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References

1 Vansina, Jan, “The Power of Systematic Doubt in Historical Enquiry,” HA 1 (1974), 120.Google Scholar

2 Vansina, Jan, “Historians, Arc Archeologists your Siblings?” HA 22 (1995), 369–408.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 399.

4 Ibid., 370. What a relief for archeologists!

5 I will forego speculation about why archeologists failed to rise to the bait.

6 I thank Kathryn Green, one of the H-Africa listserv's editors, for suckering me into this effort and for her comments on various drafts. She is not responsible for what follows. The online version of this paper appeared on March 2, 1999 and, I assume, can still be accessed at http://h-net2.msu.edu/-africa/africaforum/Vansina.html.

7 My thanks to these colleagues; you know who you are.

8 With apologies for my arrogance! Cynics might rightly complain that I have enough trouble attempting to do decent archeology.

9 Vansina, , “Historians,” 399.Google Scholar

10 Are historians archeologists? Since archeologists attempt to reconstruct the past from its material remains, then, reluctantly, I think that historians arc not archeologists, since the objects of historians' studies are far from tangible. Indeed, Vansina makes this point at some length. In the words of a colleague, “if you give a historian a trowel, it does not make him or her an archaeologist.” Of course, I hasten to add that you don't have to use a trowel to be an archaeologist, though in my opinion it often serves to focus the mind.

11 Methodology in particular is discussed in Section III, while Section VI focuses upon the “Neolithic Revolution”; others may well wish to comment on the interesting ideas expressed in those sections. Sections IV and V present a synopsis of some recent archeological research of interest to historians, and might, therefore, be deemed less controversial. Although I hope that it is not necessary to read Vansina's article in order to comprehend this paper, I recommend doing so.

12 For example, Little, Barbara J., ed., Text-Aided Archaeology (Boca Raton, 1992)Google Scholar; Orser, Charles E. Jr., A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World (New York, 1995).Google Scholar For text-aided archeology in Africa, see Posnansky, Merrick and DeCorse, Christopher R., “Historical Archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa: a Review,” Historical Archaeology 20(1986), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For examples of research, see publications on most of the regions discussed in Connah, Graham, African Civilizations (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; also Connah, Graham, ed., Transformations in Africa: Essays on Africa's Later Past (London, 1998).Google Scholar

13 Vansina, , “Historians,” 369.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 370.

15 I for one always had ambivalent feelings about the long-running (but now defunct) series of commissioned articles on archeology in the Journal of African History that seem to have been conceived of as annotated lists of radiocarbon dates to be mined by historians. Of course, it was hard to refuse when asked to prepare one of these articles since the invitation carried the aura that one had finally achieved a certain professional standing. However, the ways in which archeologists tried to subvert the format of these articles presumably contributed to the demise of the series. Of course, now that the series has ended, it would be good to see more archeologists contributing substantive papers to the journal. My impression here is that the paucity of such papers should not be charged to the editors of the journal, but rather to archeologists and to the rise of the African Archeological Review, Of course, one difference between archeologists and historians, which is perhaps not as trivial as it appears, is that historians use these damn footnotes all the time.

16 Vansina, , “Historians,” 396.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 371-73, 376.

18 Ibid., 371. Halls, Martin recent Archeology Africa (London, 1996)Google Scholar, while discussing various topics in African prehistory, is aimed more as an introduction to archeological method and theory for an African audience, though historians might well benefit from reading it.

19 Phillipson, D.W., African Archaeology (2d ed.: Cambridge, 1993).Google Scholar

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21 Indeed, my own students find the book very hard going; it certainly takes a dogged reader to plow through the chapter on the Middle and Late Stone Ages.

22 This comment is applicable to much, if not most, of Phillipson's work, not just African Archaeology.

23 See below for more information and some examples. Admittedly the pace of posf-processual archeological research has quickened remarkably since the publication of African Archaeology, but its absence from the book is nonetheless notable, For an early discussion of some post-proccssual approaches to African archeology, see Schmidt, Peter R., “An Alternative to a Strictly Materialist Perspective: a Review of Historical Archaeology, Ethnoarchaeology, and Symbolic Approaches in African Archaeology,” American Antiquity 48 (1983), 62–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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25 Vansina, , “Historians,” 374.Google Scholar Vansina seems to be profoundly ambivalent about the work of the McIntoshs. While deriding their use of models, he nevertheless considers the 1977 Jenne-jeno excavations as the last archeological endeavor to have seized the attention of historians; ibid., 369. He also expends considerable space in a discussion of the results of the McIntoshes' recent work; ibid., 385-87. Vansina also seems to have changed his opinion of the value of models: previously, he wrote that “… models are of primary importance. Not only do they raise questions or elucidate possible connections between phenomena, but they are also the best means of evolving material to bridge gaps in information;” Vansina, , “Power,” 119.Google Scholar Some of Vansina's change of heart may have come from reading Devisse's critique of what he considers to have been over-hasty, model-based generalizations based on inadequate excavated samples; see Devisse, “Recherche,” 5 and note 24.

26 R.J. McIntosh, Peoples; McIntosh, S.K., ed. Excavations at Jenne-jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana in the Inland Niger Delta (Mali). The 1981 Season (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar; McIntosh, S.K. and McIntosh, R.J., Prehistoric Investigations in the Region of Jenne, Mali (Oxford, 1980).Google Scholar

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28 Vansina, , “Historians,” 370.Google Scholar He clearly has the Annales school of history in mind here, as indeed he makes clear later; ihid., 375.

29 Ibid., 396.

30 Ibid., 399.

31 Ibid., 396.

32 Ibid., 371; see also Devisse, “Recherche,” note 24.

33 Ibid., 377.

34 Trigger, Bruce G., “Archaeology and the Image of the American Indian,” American Antiquity 45(1980), 662–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 For example, Susan McIntosh, whose enthusiasm for models is noted by Vansina, , “Historians,” 374Google Scholar, has explicitly stated her rejection of neo-evolutionism; see McIntosh, Susan Keech, “Pathways to Complexity: An African Perspective” in McIntosh, S.K., ed., Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa (Cambridge, 1999), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; moreover, her disillusionment with neo-evolutionisin was already evident in 1994 in McIntosh, “Chancing Perceptions.” McIntosh also draws on both processual and post-processual approaches in her work.

36 For a primer in post-processual archeology, see Hodder, Ian, Reading the Past (2d ed.: Cambridge 1991).Google Scholar

37 Huffman, Thomas N., “Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the African Iron Age,” Annual Review of Anthropology 11 (1982), 133–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Archaeological Evidence and Conventional Explanations of Southern Bantu Settlement Patterns,” Africa 56 (1986), 280-98; idem., “Broederstroom and the Central Cattle Pattern,” South African Journal of Science 89 (1993), 220-26; idem., Snakes and Crocodiles: Power and Symbolism in Ancient Zimbabwe (Johannesburg, 1996). It is indeed strange that Vansina, , “Historians,” 374Google Scholar, cites this research as exemplary of the New Archeology; Huffman's work is far removed from processualism and, particularly, neo-evolutionism. In fact, a common criticism of Huffman's endeavors is that he imposes the ethnographie record onto the past and does not allow for evolutionary change in settlement patterns; see Vansina, “Historians,” note 70; Lane, Paul, “The Use and Abuse of Ethnography in the Study of the Southern African Iron Age,” Azania 29 (1996), 51–64.Google Scholar Far better examples of the impact of New Archeology can be found in the southern African literature; the researches of Hilary Deacon and John Parkington, among others, in the late 1960s and early 1970s were to inspire a generation of South African archeologists to pursue ecological approaches: Deacon, H.J., Where Hunters Gathered: A Study of Holocene Stone Age People in the Eastern Cape (Claremont, 1976)Google Scholar; Parkington, J.E., “Seasonal Mobility in the Late Stone Age,” African Studies 31 (1972), 223–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, are perhaps the seminal publications. For further discussion see Deacon, Janette, “Weaving the Fabric of Stone Age Research in Southern Africa” in Robertshaw, Peter, ed., A History of African Archaeology (London, 1990), 39–58.Google Scholar

38 For example, Hall, Simon L. and Binneman, J., “Later Stone Age Burial Variability in the Eastern Cape: A Social Interpretation,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 42 (1987), 140–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wadley, Lyn, Later Stone Age Hunters of the Southern Transvaal: Social and Ecological Interpretation (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Parkington, J., Nilssen, P., Reeler, C. and Henshilwood, C., “Making Sense of Space at Duneficld Midden Campsite, Western Cape, South Africa,” Southern African Field Archaeology 1 (1992), 63–70.Google Scholar

39 For example, Lewis-Williams, J.D., The Rock Art of Southern Africa (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; Lewis-Williams, J.D. and Dowson, T.A., Images of Power (Johannesburg, 1989)Google Scholar; Dowson, T.A., Rock Engravings of Southern Africa (Johannesburg, 1992).Google Scholar

40 For example, Childs, S. Terry, “Style, Technology and Iron Smelting Furnaces in Bantu-Speaking Africa,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 10 (1991), 332–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Childs, S.T. and Killick, D., “Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture,” Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993), 317–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmidt, Peter R., Iron Production in East Africa: Symbolism, Science and Archaeology (Bloomingron, 1997)Google Scholar; Schmidt, P.R. and Mapunda, B.B., “Ideology and the Archaeological Record in Africa: Interpreting Symbolism in Iron Smelting Technology,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16 (1997), 128–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Sinclair, P., Space, Time and Social Formation: A Territorial Approach to the Archaeology and Anthropology of Zimbabwe and Mozambique c. 0-1700 AD (Uppsala, 1987)Google Scholar; Sinclair, P., Pikirayi, I., Pwiti, C. and Soper, R., “Urban Trajectories on the Zimbabwean Plateau,” in Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B. and Okpoko, A., eds., The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns (London, 1993), 705–31.Google Scholar

42 For example, Winer, M. and Deetz, J., “The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern Cape, 1820-1860,” Social Dynamics 16 (1990), 55–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also, Hall, Martin, “The Archaeology of Colonial Settlement in Southern Africa,” Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993), 177–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 For example, Schrire, Carmel, Digging through Darkness. Chronicles of an Archaeologist (Charlottesville, 1995)Google Scholar; Hall, Martin, “The Legend of the Lost City; or, The Man with the Golden Balls,” Journal of Southern African Studies 21 (1995), 179–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Kent, Susan, ed., Gender in African Prehistory (Walnut Creek, 1998)Google Scholar; Wadley, Lyn, ed., Our Gendered Past: Archeological Studies of Gender in Southern Africa (Johannesburg, 1998).Google Scholar

45 McIntosh, Beyond Chiefdoms.

46 Vansina, , “Historians,” 375Google Scholar; Vansina offers the work of Jean Devisse as exemplary in this approach; see Devisse, Vallées du Niger; “Recherche”.

47 The “direct historical approach” in analogical reasoning has a long history in archeology, especially in the American Southwest. The term was probably coined by Wedel, Waldo K., The Direct Historical Approach in Pawnee Archeology (Washington, 1938)Google Scholar, while the most famous statement of the underlying principles is Ascher, Robert, “Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 17 (1961), 317–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for recent discussions, see Wylie, Alison, “‘Simple’ Analogy and the Role of Relevance Assumptions: Implications of Archaeological Practice,” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2 (1988), 134–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and for Africa, see Stahl, Ann B., “Change and Continuity in the Banda Area, Ghana: The Direct Historical Approach,” Journal of Field Archaeology 21 (1994), 181–203.Google Scholar

48 For example, Hodder, Ian, ed., Archaeology as Long-Term History (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar

49 As understood by Vansina.

50 Fletcher, R., “Time Perspectivism, Annales, and the Potential of Archaeology” in Knapp, A.B., ed., Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory (Cambridge, 1992), 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Ibid.

52 Vansina, , “Historians,” 396.Google Scholar

53 See especially ibid., 379; cf. ibid., 381-82.

54 Ibid., 384.

55 I hesitate to cite examples of this practice among the work of my colleagues, Vansina mentions examples in his discussion in Section III. In fact, the critical reader wishing to find examples need look no further than my own site reports.

56 Historical linguistics seems to me to be a field of study, like archeology, where extravagant extrapolation may be easily concealed in technical appendices.

57 McIntosh, Peoples.

58 Henige, David, Oral Historiography (New York, 1982), 2.Google Scholar

59 Connah, Graham, “The Salt of Bunyoro: Seeking the Origins of an African Kingdom,” Antiquity 65(1991), 480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Connah, Graham, African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective (Cambridge, 1987), 13.Google Scholar

61 In the interests of both brevity and debate, allow me to indulge in a few somewhat sweeping generalizations.

62 Historians may supply their own examples.

63 See previous note.

64 For critical discussion of these dating efforts, see Henige, David, The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; idem, “Reflections on Early Interlacustrine Chronology: An Essay in Source Criticism,” JAH 15(1974), 27-46.

65 Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition (Harmondsworth, 1965)Google Scholar; idem., Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985).

66 See also Vansina, “Power.”

67 Posnansky, Merrick, “Kingship, Archaeology and Historical Myth,” Uganda Journal 30(1966), 1–12Google Scholar; Oliver, Roland, “A Question about the Bachwezi,” Uganda Journal 17(1953), 135–7.Google Scholar For a dissenting view see Henige, David, “Royal Tombs and Preterhuman Ancestors: A Devil's Advocacy,” Paideuma 23 (1977), 205–19.Google Scholar

68 The “New Archeology” that emerged in the 1960's embraced a positivist and explicitly scientific approach to archeology. During its infancy, adherents of New Archeology proclaimed that archeology could reconstruct all aspects of the human past, even topics such as kinship systems which many scholars had previously believed to be beyond the compass of archeological data; see, for example, Binford, Lewis and Binford, Sally, eds., New Perspectives in Archeology (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar Most processual archeologists soon turned away from this ambitious agenda; see discussion above.

69 Miller, Joseph C., ed., The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History (Folkestone, 1980).Google Scholar

70 Joseph C. Miller, “Listening for the African Past,” in ibid., 3.

71 Vansina, Jan, “Is Elegance Proof?” HA 10(1983), 307–48.Google Scholar

72 Henige, Oral Historiography; idem, “Truths Yet Unborn? Oral Tradition as a Casualty of Cultural Contact,” JAH 23(1982), 395-412; Miller, , “Listening,” 45.Google Scholar

73 Ibid., 46.

74 Ibid., 47.

75 Ibid., 49. For a thorough and recent discussion by the same author, see Miller, Joseph C., “History and Africa/Africa and History,” American Historical Review 104(1999), 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Vansina, Oral Tradition as History.

77 Miller, , “Listening,” 41–43.Google Scholar

78 Tonkin, Elizabeth, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Ibid., 6.

80 Ibid., 2.

81 Cohen, D.W., Womunafu's Bunafu: A Study of Authority in a Nineteenth-Century African Community (Princeton, 1977).Google Scholar

82 For the interrelationship between this field and archeology see, for example, Ehret, Christopher, “Linguistic Evidence and its Correlation with Archaeology,” World Archaeology 8(1976), 5–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Language Change and the Material Correlates of Language and Ethnic Shift,” Antiquity 61(1988), 366-74; idem and Merrick Posnansky, eds., The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History (Berkeley, 1982).

83 Nurse, Derek, “The Contributions of Linguistics to the Study of History in Africa,” JAH 38(1997), 359–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 Vansina, Jan, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa, (London, 1990), see esp. 11–12.Google Scholar

85 For example, Ehret, “Linguistic Evidence,” idem., “Language Change;” Schoenbrun, David L., “Cattle Herds and Banana Gardens: The Historical Geography of the Western Great Lakes Region, ca. AD 800-1500,” African Archaeological Review 11 (1993), 39–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 For example, Robertshaw, Peter and Collett, David, “A New Framework for the Study of Early Pastoral Communities in East Africa,” JAH 24 (1983), 289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

87 Posnansky, Merrick, “The Excavation of an Ankole Capital Site at Bweyorere,” Uganda Journal 32 (1968), 165–82.Google Scholar

88 Oliver, Roland, “The Problem of the Bantu Expansion,” JAH 7 (1966), 361–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; quote from 371. See also Miller, , “History and Africa,” 13.Google Scholar

89 Vansina, , Oral Tradition, 174.Google Scholar

90 For reviews see Vansina, Jan, “Bantu in the Crystal Ball I,” HA 6 (1979), 287–333Google Scholar; idem, “Bantu in the Crystal Ball II,” HA 7 (1980), 293-325; Eggert, Martin, “Historical Linguistics and Prehistoric Archaeology: Trends and Patterns in Karly Iron Age Research in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Beiträge zur Allgemeine und Vergleichenden Archäologie 3 (1981), 277–324.Google Scholar

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92 For example, Eggert, “Historical Linguistics”; Rohertshaw and Collett, “New Framework”.

93 Compare Ranger's dismissal of archeology quoted hy Vansina at the beginning of his paper; Ranger, T.O., “Towards a Usable Past” in Fyfe, Christopher, ed., African Studies Since 1945 (Edinburgh, 1976), 21.Google Scholar

94 Vansina, Jan, “New Linguistic Evidence and ‘The Bantu Expansion’,” JAH 36 (1995), 173–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The archeologist who ventures into this particular bath had better wear a protective diving suit!

95 Schmidt, Peter R., Historical Arcbaeology: A Structural Approach in an African Culture (Westport CT, 1978).Google Scholar

96 Another archaeologist who has pursued this approach more recently is Ann B. Stahl; see Stahl, “Change and Continuity;” and also idem., “Ethnic Style and Ethnic Boundaries: A Diachronic Case Study from West Central Ghana,” Ethnohistory 38 (1991), 250-75. One sometimes hears it mooted that, in the absence of polymaths, the best means to undertake interdisciplinary research is to send teams of specialists to the field, an approach that has been very successful in paleoanthropology. I was a member of two such teams, sponsored by the British Institute in Eastern Africa, that worked in the Southern Sudan nearly twenty years ago (see Mack, J. and Robertshaw, P., eds., Culture History in the Southern Sudan [Nairobi, 1982]).Google Scholar Although the experience was enjoyable, it was in my view not particularly successful since the historians and cultural anthropologists both needed longer periods than that of the normal archeological field season in which to conduct their work. Moreover, they had different requirements in the field; if anything, the presence of an archeologist, who sometimes employs many local people and generally disrupts the local economy, might be a hindrance to other social science researchers. Lest I be misunderstood, let me make it clear that I believe that archeological research generally benefits from the presence of teams of archeological specialists in the field, who may also work closely and productively with natural scientists.

97 Schmidt, , Historical Archaeology, 111.Google Scholar

98 Ibid., 5.

99 Ibid.

100 Oliver, R., “Review of P.R. Schmidt, Historical Archaeology,” JAH 20 (1979), 289–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101 For example, Tantala, Renee L., “The Early History of Kitara in Western Uganda: Process Models of Religious and Political Change” (PhD, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1989), 27–28.Google Scholar

102 See, for example, Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 188.Google Scholar Despite the positivism he claimed to espouse, Schmidt was really pioneering post-processual archeology in Africa at a time when processualism and, to a large extent, neo-evolutionism reigned supreme.

103 Vansina, , Oral Tradition as History, 160, 185.Google Scholar

104 Ibid., 10.

105 Tonkin, , Narrating, 84.Google Scholar

106 Readers may think of others.

107 Henige, Chronology of Oral Tradition.

108 Ibid., 18.

109 Ibid., 28.

110 Ibid., 34.

111 Ibid., 41ff.

112 As, for example, with the Nyoru kinglist and its ties to that of the Baganda; see ibid., 105-14.

113 Robertshaw, Peter, “Archaeological Survey, Ceramic Analysis and State Formation in Western Uganda,” African Archaeological Review 12 (1994), 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar

114 Schmidt, , Historical Archaeology, 274.Google Scholar

115 Ibid.; R. Oliver, “Review of Schmidt, Historical Archaeology.”

116 Indeed, my own opinion is thnt a correlation docs exist between the archeological site at Mubende Hill and the Cwezi shrine. For an example of a very modern Cwezi shrine attached to an ancient archeological site, see Robertshaw, Peter and Kamuhangire, Ephraim, “The Present in the Past: Archaeological Sites, Oral Traditions, Shrines and Politics in Uganda” in Pwiti, G. and Soper, R., eds., Aspects of African Archaeology: Papers from the 10th Congress of the Pan-African Association for Prehistory and Related Studies (Harare, 1996), 739–43.Google Scholar

117 I do not discuss the varied problems with radiometric, particularly radiocarbon, dating methods here, since these are well rehearsed in the literature and arc probably familiar to most historians; see, for example, Renfrew, Colin and Bahn, Paul, Archaeology (2d ed. London, 1996), 132–38.Google Scholar

118 Vansina, , “Historians,” 370.Google Scholar

119 Binford, Lewis R., “Behavioral Archaeology and the ‘Pompeii Premise’,” Journal of Anthropological Research 37 (1981), 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

120 Vansina, , “Historians,” 370.Google Scholar

121 A.B. Knapp, “Archaeology and Annales: Time, Space, and Change” In Knapp, Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory, 12; Schmidt, Peter R., “Rhythmed Time and its Archaeological Implications” in Pwiti, /Soper, , Aspects of African Archaeology, 655–62.Google Scholar

122 Schmidt, ibid., offers a couple of possible examples.

123 Tonkin, , Narrating, 130.Google Scholar

124 Miller, , “Listening,” 34.Google Scholar

125 Henige, , Chronology, 96.Google Scholar

126 See also the interesting discussion of “symbolic reservoirs;” McIntosh, R., “Middle Niger Terracottas Before the Symplegades Gateway,” African Arts 22 (1989), 74-83, 103–04CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sterner, J., “Sacred Pots and ‘Symbolic Reservoirs’ in the Mandara Highlands of Northern Cameroon” in Sterner, J. and David, N., eds., An African Commitment: Papers in Honour of Peter Lewis Shinnie (Calgary, 1992), 171–79Google Scholar; MacEachern, S., “Symbolic Reservoirs' and Inter-Group Relations: West African Examples,” African Archaeological Review 12 (1994), 205–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

127 Vansina, , “Historians,” 383.Google Scholar

128 Smith, M.E., “Rhythms of Change in Postclassic Central Mexico: Archaeology, Ethnohistory, and the Braudelian Model” in Knapp, , Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnnhistory, 52.Google Scholar

129 Smith, M.E., “Braudel's Temporal Rhythms and Chronology Theory in Archaeology,” in Knapp, , Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory, 23–34.Google Scholar

130 For example, Connah, , “Salt of Bunyoro,” 480.Google Scholar

131 I thank Jan Vansina for inspiring this paper and for not giving up on archeology. I can only wish that my command of Jan's discipline would even approach his command of mine.