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Borderlands Histories: Ethnographic Observations and Archaeological Interpretations Utah Press ISBN 9781647690236 (Carpenter&Pailes)

Borderlands Histories: Ethnographic Observations and Archaeological Interpretations, 2022
This volume presents a sampling of how documentary relations are employed in archaeological inference. We use the term documentary relations as an inclusive term for data sources outside of the material remains that are typically the focus of archaeological inquiry. These sources include historical texts, ethnographic observations, and oral histories. The contributors to this volume use these sources to various ends. A few examples include reconstructions of what might be traditionally considered historical events and periods. Most contributors primarily use these data sources as a means to “upstream” interpretations from historical contexts to precolonial periods through derivations of the direct historical approach. The use of documentary relations as supporting evidence or a font of inference generation is certainly not new, as we will discuss below, but has grown substantially in popularity over the last three decades. This increased use of documentary relations is concurrent with a humanistic turn in archaeology that emphasizes historical, or narrative approaches to interpretation. However, the use of documentary relations (a data source), a humanistic narrative approach (a theoretical stance), and the direct historical approach (a methodology for inference generation) are not uniformly coincident in application. In fact, stark differences of opinion occur even among those who espouse a historical perspective on whether various forms of documentary relations are a hindrance or boon to accurate reconstructions of pre- and postcolonial societies (Lekson 2018; Smith 2011). This volume is thus a timely contribution to a discussion of both diverse methods and application case studies in the Borderlands (Borderlands is our inclusive term for northwest Mexico and the Southwest United States). Our overarching goal in this chapter is to situate the...Read more