Page 375 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

354 Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook, Second Edition
archaeologist has less of a problem because there is no historical dimen- sion to take into account.
There has also been a significant discourse within the field of historical archaeology questioning how that field of study should develop. The debate is relevant to maritime archaeology because there are parallels between the two fields; and maritime archaeology, as a younger discipline, will inevitably face similar problems in the future.
One of the first major symposia in historical archaeology was on the subject of its role in relation to historical, anthropological, and government issues. It took place at the Conference on Historic Site Archaeology in 1967 and was followed by other important meetings, particularly in 1975 at Charleston, SC. A number of definitions of historical archaeology were dis- cussed on these occasions; however, the real issues have been obscured at times by the excessive use of jargon: “Words that cloud the minds alike of those who use them and those who read them” (Fowler, 1968). For example, Binford (1972, p. 123) suggested a “nomothetic paradigm or Hypothetico- Deductive-Inductive Process: historic site archaeologists should be actively engaged in nomothetic studies aimed at the specification of general propo- sitions suitable for testing,” whereas Dollar (1968, p. 11) suggested “an idio- graphic particularistic paradigm or Particularistic archaeology . . . where the historical archaeologist deals with a person or persons . . . [who] must therefore be dealt with historically or deductively,” and Walker (1967, p. 24) suggested a “humanistic paradigm or archaeology in the humanities . . . Far from being a science . . . [archaeology] is one of the most subjective studies in the field of intellectual research” (see South, 1977). Webster described historical archaeology as “the scientific study of material remains of past human life and activity” and Hume “. . . as the study of the material remains of both the remote and recent past in relationship to documentary history and the stratigraphy of the ground in which they are found” (see Schuyler, 1978).
The debate continues and there is still no consensus within historical archaeology as to how the subject should be studied. At the 1987 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology at Savannah, GA, it was noted that historical archaeology had still not produced the insights into human cultural behavior or evolution that had not been anticipated. There is a danger that maritime archaeology, in trying to define itself, could fall into a similar trap and obscure the subject with jargon. There is really no reason why complex subjects have to be even more confused by the exces- sive use of words that can only be understood by an elite group of people. It seems then, at present, historical archaeology cannot be used as a model for the integration of historical documentation into maritime archaeologi- cal research. Probably, the developing problem for maritime archaeology is