CHAT friends,
Just to trumpet my own efforts a bit, I though I would mention that
since the mid-1980s I have taught at Boston University a course
titled Oral History and Written Records in Archaeology. I'll be
teaching it again this coming spring, in fact. I cover not only
historical archaeology (or recent or whatever you want to call it)
but also give some consideration to things like Homeric epics &
Viking sagas & so on as examples of oral traditions that get written
down eventually (so far I haven't dealt with the Bible as a source of
archaeological data but I suppose one could), and I also look at oral
tradition in African archaeology/history and at ethnohistory in the
Americas. Among other things.
It is my conviction that all persons doing any form of historical
archaeology should be aware of analytical and interpretive approaches
that involve oral history, oral traditions, and folklore as well as
the impact of literacy and the written word upon cultures that
continue to store and pass on their histories through largely oral
means. So I congratulate the folks at Bournemouth for stepping in to
meet a genuine need as archaeology of the recent past continues to
burgeon in the UK.
Cheers,
Mary B.
--
Mary C. Beaudry, PhD, RPA
Associate Professor of Archaeology & Anthropology
Department of Archaeology
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215-1406 USA
tel. 617-358-1650
fax 617-353-6800
email: [log in to unmask]
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