Ethnohistory
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Ethnohistory is the study of cultures and
Ethnohistory uses both historical and ethnographic data as its foundation. Its historical methods and materials go beyond the standard use of documents and manuscripts. Practitioners recognize the use of such source material as maps, music, paintings, photography, folklore, oral tradition, site exploration, archaeological materials, museum collections, enduring customs, language, and placenames.[1]
Historical development
Scholars studying the history of
In the mid to late 20th century, a number of ethnohistorians of Mexico began to systematically publish many colonial alphabetic texts in indigenous Mexican languages, in a branch of ethnohistory currently known as the New Philology. That built on an earlier tradition of practitioners writing the history of Mexico that fully integrated the history of its indigenous peoples.[5][6][7]
In the United States, the field arose out of the study of American Indian communities required by the Indian Claims Commission. It gained a pragmatic rather than a theoretical orientation, with practitioners testifying both for and against Indian claims. The emerging methodology used documentary historical sources and ethnographic methods. Among the scholars working on the cases was Latin Americanist Howard F. Cline, who was commissioned to work on Florida Indians and Jicarilla Apache and Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin, Director of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley Research Project and founder of the American Society for Ethnohistory.[8]
The field has also reached into
Ethnohistory grew organically thanks to external nonscholarly pressures, without an overarching figure or conscious plan; even so, it came to engage central issues in cultural and historical analysis. Ethnohistorians take pride in using their special knowledge of specific groups, their linguistic insights, and their interpretation of cultural phenomena. They claim to achieve a more in-depth analysis than the average historian is capable of doing based solely on written documents produced by and for one group.
The definition of the field has become more refined over the years. Early on, ethnohistory differed from history proper in that it added a new dimension, specifically "the critical use of ethnological concepts and materials in the examination and use of historical source material," as described by
Reflecting upon the history of ethnohistory as research field in the US, Harkin has situated it within the broader context of convergences and divergences of the fields of history and anthropology and the special circumstances of American Indian land claims and legal history in North American in the mid-20th century.[15]
Commenting on the possibilities for ethnohistory studies of traditional societies in Europe (such as Ireland), Guy Beiner observed that "pioneering figures in the development of ethnohistory … have argued that this approach could be fruitfully applied to the study of Western societies, but such initiatives have not picked up and very few explicitly designated ethnohistories of European communities have been written to date".[16]
See also
- History
- New Philology
- Aztec codices
- Maya codices
- Ethnography
- Ethnic group
- Ethnoarchaeology
- Indian Claims Commission
- History of the Romani people
References
- ^ JSTOR 481465.
- ^ Handbook of Middle American Indians, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, volumes 12-16, Howard F. Cline, general editor. Austin: University of Texas Press 1973.
- ^ Howard F. Cline, "Introduction: Reflections on Ethnohistory" in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, vol. 12, p. 3.
- ^ Cline, "Introduction: Reflections on Ethnohistory", p. 4.
- ^ James Lockhart, "Charles Gibson and the Ethnohistory of Postconquesst Central Mexico" in Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology. Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, vol. 76. 1991, p. 178
- ^ Restall, Matthew, "A History of the New Philology and the New Philology in History", Latin American Research Review - Volume 38, Number 1, 2003, pp.113–134
- ^ "Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistory, Provisional Version, James Lockhart, Lisa Sousa, and Stephanie Wood, editors (2007)".
- ^ Newsroom, IU Bloomington. "IU ethnohistory archives to bear name of pioneering researcher Wheeler-Voegelin: IU Bloomington Newsroom: Indiana University Bloomington". news.indiana.edu. Archived from the original on 2015-09-04. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
- ^ Michael E. Harkin, "Ethnohistory's Ethnohistory," Social Science History, Summer 2010, Vol. 34#2 pp 113-128
- JSTOR 480349.
- JSTOR 482586.
- ^ Fenton, W. N. (1966). "Field Work, Museum Studies, and Ethnohistorical Research". Ethnohistory. 13 (1/2): 75.
- ^ Schieffelin, E. and D. Gewertz (1985), History and Ethnohistory in Papua New Guinea, 3
- JSTOR 482430.
- S2CID 257979216.
- ^ Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press, 2018), p.10.
Further reading
- Adams, Richard N. "Ethnohistoric research methods: Some Latin American features." Anthropological Linguistics 9, (1962) 179-205.
- Bernal, Ignacio. "Archeology and written sources.". 34th International Congress of Americanists (Vienna, 1966). Acta pp. 219–25.
- Carrasco, Pedro. "La etnohistoria en Meso-américa." 36th International Congress of Americanists (Barcelona, 1964). Acta 2, 109-10.
- Cline, Howard F. "Introduction: Reflections on Ethnohistory" in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, Part 1, vol. 12. pp. 3–17. Austin: University of Texas Press 1973.
- Fenton, W.N. "The training of historical ethnologists in America." American Anthropologist 54(1952) 328-39.
- Gunnerson, J.H. "A survey of ethnohistoric sources." Kroeber Anthr. Soc. Papers 1958, 49-65.
- Lockhart, James "Charles Gibson and the Ethnohistory of Postconquesst Central Mexico" in Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology. Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, vol. 76. 1991
- Sturtevant, W.C. "Anthropology, history, and ethnohistory." Ethnohistory 13(1966) 1-51.
- Vogelin, E.W. "An ethnohistorian's viewpoint" The Bulletin of the Ohio Valley historic Indian conference, 1 (1954):166-71.