ABSTRACT
Ranging in geographical and temporal extent from Roman Britain and Classical Greece to colonial Africa, Brazil and the United States, the principal defining characteristic of the chapters in this book is that they are all concerned with societies for which we have some form of surviving written record. As such, this volume falls within what is broadly conceived as ‘historical archaeology’, an area of archaeological endeavour to which many have attempted to attribute subdisciplinary status. There has, however, been considerable confusion over the definition of historical archaeology and much tortured debate about which specific perspectives and subject matter should characterize it. Furthermore, over the last decade there has emerged a prominent movement which advocates the conceptualization of historical archaeology as the study of the age of European colonialism, or the capitalist era, essentially excluding the study of periods prior to 1492 (DeCorse 1996: 19). How does this collection fit in with such an approach to historical archaeology? Indeed, should the study of societies with written records be a discrete area of research with its own theory and method? What makes it distinctive from prehistory? These are some of the epistemological questions that are inevitably raised by any attempt to develop a world-wide historical archaeology, and which are the starting point for this introduction.
