Anthro 463

ANTHROPOLOGY 463 - Ethnohistory

This course is intended to provide graduate students and advanced majors in anthropology with an introduction to basic practices of ethnohistory related to anthropological research. The format will involve both lecture and seminar arrangements. Substantial portions of the class are intended for group discussion of various topics and for student reports.

This course will discuss the issues pertaining to this perspective by examining case studies from various parts of the world and from diverse social organizational examples. Recent theoretical frameworks in anthropology have ushered in some new approaches that retain traditional social orientations to problem solving while integrating written history, oral tradition, historical linguistics, and other non-archaeological methods into a holistic framework. This represents a shift from the anti-historical stance of recent decades, which itself was a reaction to earlier, uncritical use of the historical record in anthropological interpretation.

Recently, new methodologies for combining distinct lines of evidence are being presented and applied. These methodologies are concerned with understanding the limits of both records, and with establishing a dialog between the sources instead of assigning primacy to history. We will be concerned with both methodology and outcome; our goals are to contribute to the practice of holistic anthropology as well as to show how these approaches are applied in specific case studies.