Both the geographic and analytic scales at which historical archaeologists work vary considerably. Scholars have argued for fruitful scales of analysis from the global world system, to regions, to communities, to household, and even to individual artifacts.
Because historical archaeology in the United States is somewhat fragmented, practitioners struggle to define unifying questions, looking for ‘questions that count’. Some archaeologists look to social historians and cultural anthropologists to define important questions. Certainly some of the questions concern race, class, and gender and are of current political and sociological import.
One of the unifying commonalities in the discipline is the inevitable focus on material culture. Historical archaeology in the United States has matured into a diverse discipline using a wide range of material culture, historical documents, and theoretical frameworks. The range of issues is broad. Practitioners experiment with the methodologies and theoretical approaches needed to address topics such as ideology, resistance, ethnic and gender identity, power relations, and capitalism, beyond but not abandoning traditional concerns like chronology, subsistence, and land use. Whatever the approach or topic, artifacts lie at the core of the discipline. Interpreting material culture depends upon archaeological context. Without such context, artifact analysis is limited to aesthetic opinion and market value. Every archaeology student trained in the United States is told repeatedly that without context, artifacts are meaningless. Similarly, the contexts themselves are broadened to encompass not only stratigraphic levels and features, but also societies and cultural patterns. As the questions become more complex, broader contexts are required. Historical archaeology makes significant contributions to material culture studies as it broadens the sources for writing history.
Several disciplines beyond archaeology, such as the history of technology, materials science, and art history are interested in artifacts. Because things are central to human expression, Material Culture Studies has emerged as a new discipline. Under this umbrella, many disciplines are making the leap from studying isolated objects to a more comprehensive look at meanings of objects in broader contexts. The influence of anthropology is at least partly responsible for this transition but material culture studies in many disciplines are broadening the contexts they study. The focus on material culture invites interdisciplinary cooperation and synergistic research.
Several archaeologists suggest that capitalism be considered the proper primary focus of the discipline and argue that such a focus solves a long-standing problem of an atheoretical and eclectic stance in the discipline. Capitalism is recognized as important because it focuses on the development of the current dominant ideology of the modern Western world. There are weaknesses though, not the least of which is a Western/European centered viewpoint that may serve to omit cross-culturally relevant work incorporating written documentation such as that on Old World precapitalist states, political maneuvering between Native American groups, medieval Europe, or African cultures documented through oral history. The European emphasis comes from the history parentage of historical archaeology. The anthropology parent provides an emphasis on the ‘other’. Historical archaeology need not shortchange either outlook but may examine the dynamic interplay between and within societies and social groups in various positions of power and powerlessness. In the United States such a historical archaeology is nearly always centered on time periods and people embedded in or buffeted by the complex context of capitalism.
Research on the culture of capitalism seeks to understand the most pervasive changes of the past half-millennium: how did people make sense of capitalism’s economic, technical, and social transformations and their cultural effects? A focus on capitalism in this case begins with mercantile capitalism from the fifteenth century rather than solely on forms of industrial capitalism from the eighteenth century. Capitalism as world system serves as a way to keep myriad issues connected. Within the world system of capitalism there are different spatial and temporal scales of analysis and different foci for research. Within the United States the phenomenon of capitalism is not limited by region or time period; it is not unique to East Coast industrialism. Although capitalism supports and is supported by dominant cultural ideologies, neither it nor the ideologies are transcendent or all-encompassing; they are challenged, changed, and embraced.
An archaeology of capitalism cannot be confined within the United States. Instead it is worldwide in scope. Therefore, historical archaeology considers the development of the modern world system, with all the ‘haunts’ of modernism, in cross-cultural perspective. In looking to capitalism and the development of contemporary society and the modern world as unifying concepts, historical archaeologists turn their attention around the globe to areas colonized or otherwise affected by Europeans. Capitalism is not monolithic, as regional differences in indigenous culture, historical contingencies, and ecological setting are understood to influence as well as be influenced by European-led economic conquest. The cross-cultural approach is needed to understand the contemporary ‘modern world’ that is truly diverse.
World History
