Zripadoceskri< UmVerzlta

. .
v Plzni
Fnkultn
kat . 1w.~l~llltnJ(~h
... RtudH
edra socwlni a kulturni
antropolo!,rie

n Ii IF'"

Handbook of Methods in
If I Cultural Anthropology

~\J
Upadoee.k8 unlv
Fakulta hum .el"Zita v Pmu
Katedra Boct...:l amtnfch studif
/:I. a kult
Tylova 18, 301 2" antropologie
tel 5 Plzeti
.; 019 / 732 24 66
 l
I
Handbook of Methods in
Cultural Anthropology Hanclli~~ 9t~4t1Iods)in l
Cultural Anthropolog~
EDITOR: l
H. Russell Bernard, University of Florida

EDITORIAL BOARD
l
Carol R. Ember, Human Relations Area Files
tI l
•
Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
lane H. Hill, University ojArizona
Roy A. Rappaport, deceased
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, University oj California, Berkeley
1
Thomas Schweizer, University ojCologne

,--\(;'-1
l
cj~"

H. Russell Bemard II
editor
l
l
(7)~)
,ALTiy\I\IRA
l
PRESS

A Division of Sage Publications, Inc.

Walnut Creek. London. New De/hi
l
1918
 CAROLINE B. BRETTELL.

Fourteen

Fieldwork in the Archives

Methods and Sources in
Historical Anthropology

Introduction
In 1899 Frederick Maitland penned his frequently quoted declaration "By and by
anthropology will have to make the choice between being history and being
nothing" ([1975J:295). Although disagreed with, Maitland's categorical statement
offered an alternative approach to nineteenth-century evolutionists who had
formulated a generalized history of broad and supposedly cross-culturally uniform
stages of structural change. Maitland began a debate among anthropologists that
continues to the present, and it assumes new form with each paradigm shift within
the discipline. Early twentieth-century Boasian historical particularism, which
emphasized that societies are created by their own historical circumstances, was, in
some sense, a direct response to the gauntlet tossed out by Maitland.
By contrast, the functionalist paradigm that predominated in the 1940s and 1950s
was ahistorical. Radcliffe-Brown, for example, argued that in the societies "without
written history" that are generally the subject of anthropological investigation,
historical study could be nothing more than conjectural and hence suspect. l The
implications of the functionalist position are clear. As Burke (1992: 13) stated it, .oH
is hard to say whether it was the spread of fieldwork which led to the rise of
functionalism or vice versa. Slipping into the idiom of the functionalists themselves,
one might say that the new explanation and the new method of research 'fitted' each
other. Unfortunately, they reinforced the tendency of social theorists to lose interest
in the past." The result was a kind of essentialism that often set the "people without
history" into a fixed and static framework of analysis.

5/3
 51-1 BRETrELL Fieldwork ill the Archives 515

It was to the ahistoricism of structural-functionalism that E. E. EvanS-Pritchard' ,go we could not claim what we can claim now-that history has found a new,
addressed himself in a commentary on anthropology and history that is by now serious, and most likely penllanent place in the ethnographic perspective and
pe;,haps aswell known as Maitland's,?ictum. Anthropology, Evans-Pritchardargued,' therefore in anthropological method.
~s a special kind of hlstonography and only as such could it be "empirical, and" What has motivated this rapprochement with history in the fann of historical
In the true sense of the word, scientific" (1962:26). He questioned the isolation of' For Ohnuki-Tiemey (1990a:I), there are two reasons: (I) the
the small-scale societies that anthropologists were used to studying: "If still fairly'- realization that "there has never been a culture without history"; and (2) an increas-
sl.mpl~ In st~cture [these commUnities are] enclosed in, and fann part of, great: ing number of anthropologists are engaged in the study of so-called more complex
11IStoncal societies.... [Anthropologists] can no longer ignore history ... but must ~):,soc'ieti,es with
long historical traditions. Chance (1996:392) focuses on avoiding the
explicitly reject it or admit its relevance" (p. 2 1 ) . ! attribution of "greater antiquity to certain practices and beliefs than they in fact
Although some British social anthropologists were producing historically ITamed'; possess," a perspective that locates change rather than continuity at the center of our
ethnographies (Schapera 1962; Lewis 1968), it took time for the discipline as a l analyses. To these, we should add recent challenges to the boundedness of the
whole to liberate itself from the functionalist paradigm. Even those anthropologists concept of culture, challenges that ask us to explore and understand how the lives
who began working in parts of the world with rich written records of the past' of individuals, families, and communities are historically produced and altered not
tended to treat the records superticially, or not at all. William Douglass (I984:xiii) " only by local, but also by global forces.
descnbes the trepldallon with which he approached the municipal archives of, Some suggest that history offers anthropologists the opportunity to extend the
Echalar, in the province of Navarra in Spain. "The wall of the council chambers 'f comparative method by increasing-in time rather than in space-the number of
was lined with a chaotic mass of parchment and paper, some dating back to the; cases that we study.' Silverrnan (1986:125) notes that the anthropologist working
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I made the rather arbitrary decision to use the alongside the historian in a dusty provincial Italian archive may be studying the
earliest available (mid-nineteenth century) household census as a base line so thad same documents but the goals and problems that he or she is addressing are shared
I could ignore all earlierdocumentation."When historical materials were considered'; with "the ethnographer of New Guinea, the archeologist of the pre-Conquest Maya,
by anthropologist~, they were primarily "background to the ethnographic present::\· the primatologist observing the social behavior of our chimpanzee relatives, and the
rather than ... an Integral part of anthropological analysis" (Silverrnan 1979:413).'" urban anthropologist studying Korean greengrocers in contemporary Manhattan."
The exceptions, of course, were anthropologists who called themselves", Historical anthropologists tend to address big problems in local places and to frame
eth~ohistorians and who worked primarily on the past of Native American po~ their questions in tenns of cross-cultural comparison. Thus, Jane and Peter
ulatJons. To many, ethnohistory involves reconstruction of the past of a region and: Schneider (1996:3) open their study of fertility decline and the ideology of class in
a people who have no written history. To others, it involves a history from the Sicily with the following statement: "The drama, and the trauma, of world popu-
insider's point of view (Gewertz and Schieffelin 1985).' More recently, some have lation history since the mid-eighteenth century, and the ways people interpret it, are
defined ethnohistory as the study of historical consciousness (Dening 1991). Still the broadest COncerns of this study. The expansion and contraction of the population
others emphasize the application of anthropological theory and method to history, of one Sicilian community between, roughly, 1860 and 1980, are its narrowest
thereby bringing ethnohistory closer to historical anthropology. concerns."
No doubt the prolific work of ethnohistorians provided the foundation for the Although much has been written about the rapprochement between anthropology
shift toward diachronic and processual modes of analysis described by Ortner (1984) and history (Cohn 1962, 1980, 1981; Davis 1981; Adams 1982; Sahlins 1983;
in "Theory in Anthropology Since the 1960s." Among the major works of Kertzer et .al. 1986; Medick 1987; Biersack 1989, 1991; Roseberry 1989; Kellogg
anthropology that substantiate this shift are Europe and the People Without History 1991; Comaroff and Comaroff 1992; Silverrnan and Gulliver 1992; Dirks 1996),
(Wolf 1982), Islands ofHistory (Sahlins 1985), Sweetness and Power (Mintz 1985), methods in historical anthropology are rarely discussed.' The implicit assumption,
Sepik RiverSocieties: A Historical Ethnography ofthe Chambri and their Neighbors of Course, is that historical anthropology is a reconstruction of the past of a society
(Gewertz 1983), High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa through the use of documents. But what are these documents? How are they to be
Buddhism (Ortner 1989), Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily < assessed and used? And are those who call themselves historical anthropologists
(Schneider and Schneider 1976), Emigration in a South Italian Town; An '. doing something different ITom historians or, for that matter, ITom those who
Anthropological History (Douglass 1984), and Body ofPower, Spirit ofResistance: '- COntinue to call themselves ethnohistorians? How does one do fieldwork in the
The Culture and History of a South African People (Comaroff 1985). Fifty years ,
5/6 BRETfELL Fieldwork in the Archives 517

Certainly, the historical field methods used will be shaped by the particularqu How, then, does one begin to acquire the skills necessary to evaluate critically
tions asked.' Renato Rosaldo (1980) relied primarily on oral history to explore 'dCICUlmentar) sources? An old but still useful introduction to the documentary record
cultural construction of warfare among the Hongot headhunters of Northern Lu be found in Pitt's concise Using Historical Sources in Anthropology and
in the Philippines. Brettell (1986) and Netting (198i) used nominal record link Sociology (1972). He covers the diverse range of archives-public and official,
to examine changes in demographic patterns and relations of kinship over two religious, Institutional, business and company sources, pnvate p,apers, and ~ata
three centuries in a Portuguese village and a Swiss mountain community res banks-as well as methods of critical analysis. When anthropologIsts venture 1OtO
tively. Kertzer (1984) used similar methods to focus on household and family struC'. archives, they must learn about and apply the same evaluative criteria used by
ture in central Italy in a 30-year period of time set completely in the past. Sahli historians to determine the reliability of documentary evidence. IQ Such criteria
(1981, 1985) has juxtaposed an analysis of myth with an analysis of historic include an assessment of the social position, intelligence, and linguistic abilities of
documents to explore differences in the emic and etk interpretations of Captain' the observer; of the attitudes that may have influenced the observations; of what is
Cook's death at the hands of Hawaiians in 1779.' Bemard Cohn (1987, 1996), dui' included and what is omitted; of intended audience and the motivation for creating
ing a lifetime of fieldwork in the archives, has approached a range of document .the document; and of narrative style.
sources (legal codes, statistical enurnerations, official surveys and other published, However, historical anthropologists bring additional questions to their use of
reports, lravel accounts, gazetteers, administrative histories, and museum exhibitiod documepts. These questions are often based on their knowledge of contemporary
catalogues) as texts that can be de constructed to reveal the nature of colonial society. ethnography, of ethnocentrism, of power politics in the context of colonial
in India. Finally, Marla Powers (1986) has used a biographical method and life onl:oumt,,,., and of the difficulty for any outsider of understanding another culture.
histories to document change over time in the lives of Oglala Sioux women. ',~ Most historical anthropologists have conducted fieldwork among the people whose
In the remainder of this chapter, 1 will develop my discussion of these varying history they are writing and can draw on the perspective gained from this eth-
historical methods further. I begin with documentary sources and how anthro'l nographic knowledge to assess the kind of cultural understanding that the observer
pologists have used them to study family history, demographic history, and politicaL who left the written record possessed. Sturtevant (1968:458) offers a good example.
economic history. I focus, in particular, on the application of quantitative an A historian, writing in 1944 about the 1837 escape of the Seminole leader
qualitative methods and on the differences between micro- and macrohistoric Coacoochee (Wildcat) from Fort Augustine through a small cell window, doubted
approaches. Next, 1 discuss life history and oral history. 1 then address briefly oth" the report that Wildcat used "medicinal roots" to reduce his weight to squeeze
sources and methods that can be used in historical anthropology, specificaIl through the opening. Sturtevant suggests that knowledge of the magical practices
material culture and visual images. I end by considering the relationship betwee' and beliefs of the modem Seminole allowed the anthropologist "to acceptthis detail
ethnographic fieldwork and archival research-that is, the efforts to link the past t' as a reliable report." The issue here is not about medicinal roots having the effect
the present. Two things wiIl be evident in this discussion: (1) sources, methodS,. described, but about a particular emic explanation that is valid to the Seminole and
modes of analysis, and theory are ultimately inseparable; and (2) research strategies therefore a distinct kind of historical fact subject to a different set of scholarly
and methods of historical anthropologists are best studied by examining the prodUCtS. judgments.
of their work. What Charles TiIly (1981) and Theda Skocpol (1984:361) haYe., Ethnographic knowledge can also be brought to bear on the evaluation of enu-
claimed for historical sociology is equaIly true for historical anthropology: There," merative sources. Shoemaker (1992) addresses the methodological problems that
are no mechanical recipes for proper methods. ,- face family historians who use census data to analyze Native American household
structure. Specifically, she identifies the attempts to fit Native Americans into a
Euro American mold and to use enumerative data to test the success of particular
Docttmentary Evidence: Evaluating Sources government policies of resettlement and reorganization. Translation problems are
significant, particularly as applied to relationship terms. Census data for the
In the early days of ethnohistorical research, anthropologists such as Bruce Trigge , Cherokee, she argues, are probably of higher quality than that for the Navajo
were extremely critic<l1 of the bck of rigor in the use of documentary evidence.' because of their greater command of English and hence familiarity with Euro
"Statements <Ire considered without reference to their immediate context, and no:: American culture.
effort is made to assess the binses or abilities of the recorder. The result is a mixturc~' A broad understanding of cultural models can also be brought to bear on the
of arrogance and naivete in the use of material which frequently repels the pro- evaluation of sources. Thus, a missionary description of a high chief of the Calusa
fessiClnal historian" (1976: 12),9 '
 518 BREITELL Fieldwork in the Archives 519

Indians of South Florida marrying his full sister is reasonable, given the exceptions{ DlC:lh'JOS to historical data are Haskins and Jeffrey (1990) and Jarausch and Hardy
to incest taboos in other strati fled societies around the world (Sturtevant 1968:458),.: (1991). Equally useful is the bibliography prepared by Grossbart (1992). However,
Similarly, ~he richer ethnohistoric .inform~tion about onc Native American group,'.; best general discussion of sources and methods in historical demography is that
the Iroquols for example, can, with cautIOn, be used to help piece together the~. WiIligan and Lynch (1982), who not only review the types of sources-parish
scantier data on another group such as the Huron (Trigger 1976). ,.,; andcivil registration records, enumerations and censuses, genealogiesand population
Finally, a sophisticated understanding of the impact of culture contact, conquest)' registers, organizational and institutional records-but also engage in a detailed
and colonialism as historical processes can deter misinterpretation. Obeyesekere ;,i discussion of specific methods of population reconstruction and analysis, including
(1992:9) illustrates this by contrasting the treatment of a British civil servant namede nominal record linkage and family reconstitution, computer simulation, regression,
Woolf in Kandy, Sri Lanka, in 1907 (well after the British took over the role of" time series, and log-linear modeling, and factor analysis. l1
local chiefs) with that of Robert Andrews, British ambassador to the court of the Nominal record linkage involves finding the same individual in a variety of
independent Kandyan Kingdom in 1796. In the first case, the Sri Lankans prostrated documents that come from a range of sources. Family reconstitution is then a
themselves before Woolf; in the second, Andrews was required to kneel and those ptocedure whereby these individuals are grouped into family units. Although prob-
in his entourage had to prostrate themselves before the sovereign. The difference lems of incomplete sources, accurate identification, changes of name, and a mobile
reflects a change in historical conditions and power relationships that affected both: and fluid population are inherent to these methods, together they have provided one
ceremonial life and the treatment of outsiders. of the most productive avenues to teconstruct the daily lives of the "ordinary"
Obeyesekere moves from this issue to an analysis of what he argues is an people of the past."
uncritical reading of texts related to the death of Captain James Cook in Hawaii Winchester (1992) offers an excellent survey of 20 years of the development and
in 1779 and, by extension, a misrepresentation of native thought. He cites several applications of these methods, including theit adaptation to the world of micro-
specific examples from Marshall Sahlins's book Historical Metaphors. Sahlins computers. Among the examples of anthropological work using record linkage
(1995) offers a convincing and rigorous rejoinder. In several appendices to his andIor family reconstitution are Kertzer (1984) and Kertzer and Hogan's (1989)
book How Natives Think, he addresses quite specifically the particular sources that research on the population of Casellechio in central Italy in the late nineteenth
he has been accused of overlooking or misreading. He thereby raises intriguing century; Brettell's (1986) study of migration, marriage, fertility, and illegitimacy in
methodological issues about the use of historical evidence that make the book, in northern Portugal between 1700 and the present; Birdwell-Pheasant's (1993)
one reviewer's opinion, "an excellent choice for any advanced course in historical ~ reconsideration of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish stem family;
anthropological method" (Friedman 1997:262; see also Borofsky 1997). Despite Schneider and Schneider's (1996) study of fertility decline in Sicily between 1860
their differences, there are two points about which Sahlins and Obeyesekerewould, and 1980; Wolf and Huang's (1980) study of marriage and adoption in Taiwan
I think, agree in general if not in the specifics. (I) Historical documents should between 1845 and 1945; and Netting's (1981) study of ecological change and
be read with a sensitivity to the social, political, and cultural context within which continuity in a Swiss mountain community from 1700 to 1980.
they were produced. (2) We must work not only to identify the ethnocentrism of In Netting's case, the method worked particularly well because he was dealing
the writer of a document but our own ethnocentrism as evaluators of that with a closed-corporate community with relatively little mobility for much of its
document. history. Well over 90% of resident families could be fully or partially reconstituted
and supplementary data available in published genealogies, census manuscripts, and
tax listings made rigorous cross-checking possible. Kertzer's focus was less on
·Methods in Family History and Historical Demography demographic rates than on household composition and patterns of coresidence.
Drawing on Italian population registers, a range of other historical sources, and the
A range of quantitative methods of data collection and analysis has been developed household typology developed by Eugene Hammel (Hammel and Laslett 1974),
IIIthe fields of family history and historical demography. Many of these have been Kertzer and his colleague Dennis Hogan were able to reconstruct family life in
used successfully by anthropologists, particularly those working in Europe, and by complex sharecropping households in central Italy in the latter nineteenth and early
those conducting research in some of the more traditional regions of anthropological twentieth centuries. lJ
fieldwork such as Africa (Howell 1979; Cordell et a I. 1996) and East Asia (Skinnet What is most innovative about the work of Kertzer and Hogan is the application
1957; Wolf and Huang 1980; Hanley and Wolf 1985; Davis and Harrell 1993; of the life course method. This method, also adopted by historian Tamara Hareven
Harrell 1995). Among the general works that review the application of quantitative (1982), in her study of industrial workers in New England, and by historian George
 520 BRETIELL
I Fieldwork ill the Archives 521

Alter (1988) inhi~ study of women in Verviers, Belgium, in the mid-nineteenth' Other anthropologists and historians, especially those conducting research on
century, makes mdlvlduals the center of analysis and focuses on how their lives ar\ European, Asian, and American family history, have turned to published genealogies
affected by changing historical circumstances. The method offers an alternativ: rather than to construct them by means of interviews (Meskill 1970; Sabean 1970;
model to the more normative and fixed family or developmental cycle model. It is . Ahem 1976; Adams and Kasakoff 1980; Netting 1981; Hanley and Wolf 1985;
thoroughly delineated in many of the writings of the sociologist Glen Elder (1975 ." )(nodel 1988; Ortner 1989). These genealogies are often subjected to methods of
1977, 1987; see also Hareven 1978; Kertzer and Schiaffino 1983). "; quantitative analysis similar to those applied to families reconstituted from VItal
Somewhat different is the method of cohort analysis used by Rosaldo (1980) in if registers.
his historical study of the liongot. Rosaldo suggests that "cohort analysis directs '
inquiry toward the various developmental processes, through which groups repr(}.
duce themselves, perpetuating, modifying or abruptly changing their social structure" • From Family History to Local Social, Economic,
(p. 112). Like the life course method, cohort analysis is drawn from sociology.>
and Political History
(Ryder 1965) but has. been used in historical research aimed at a longitudinal t
analysIs of the collective destmles of groups of individuals (Mason et al. 1973',' Historical anthropologists often move beyond the reconstruction of family and
Willigan and Lynch 1982)." ' ',' demographic history based on the data available in vital records, census enu~
, Within anlhropology, the genealogical method is a well-accepted technique for merations, population registers, and oral or written genealogies to explore a range
lustoncal reconstruction and has a long tradition among British social anthro- of other qualitative historical sources that shed light on social and economic life in
pologists working in Africa (Bohannan 1952; Lewis 1962). One of the most com- the past as well as on the significance of particular events in the lives of local
~Iete discussions of the methods of genealogical analysis for demographic history J populations.
IS Bennett D~k~ and W~rren Mon:ilI's edited volume Genealogical Demography Gait (1986, 1991) links household census data to tax registers, data drawn from
(1980). In their mtroductlOn, the editors evaluate the ethnographic and documentary notarial transactions, and police and judicial records in order to reconstruct
approaches to genealogy to show how much can be missed in an "infonnants" list settlement patterns and aspects of social class in an Apulian town in southern Italy
when it is checked against a "records" list. Of equal value is WilIigan and Lynch's from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. By analyzing both the remembered
(1982) coverage of types of genealogies, of the problems with genealogical sources, and the documented past, he is able to show the historical depth of specific elements
and of some of the methods used to extract marriage and fertility rates from of the present-day economic and social landscape. In his discussion of kinds of
genealogical Jata. evidence, Gait notes that many anthropologists begin their foray into history in
A good example of the application of this method can be found in Freeman's places where they have previously worked as ethnographers and hence must cope
(1979) study of the Pasiegos of northern Spain. Through informant interviews with limitations in the historical documents available (1991:67).
Freeman constructed Pasiego genealogies and then linked this infonnation to censu~ In a more narrative format, Rosenberg (1988) uses numerous historical sources
manuscript data. In an unpublished paper explicating the method, Freeman (1981) to trace changes in a Swiss Alpine community as it gradually came under the
notes that a range of other data is transmitted in the process of collecting a influence of the state and was affected by the spread of capitalism. Using a model
genealogy-the politics of marriage, issues of property transmission, the dynamics of negotiation, and centering her analysis on subsistence patterns, market conditions,
of household fonnation, migration, interpersonal and intracommunal relations and and class formation, Rosenberg looks at how village people coped with the changing
snippets of gossip and scandal. She argues that these genealogies can then se~e as demands on their community that were introduced from outside. Among her primary
a backdrop for the interpretation of written sources such as church and civil Sources are property and tax records and wills-both of which offer invaluable
archives, tax records, and land cadastres (1981:6). In particular, they may help to information on property relations-land transactions, and long-term trends in class
reveal certain recording conventions that obscure specific behavioral practices :~'i.i:eh fonnation and inequality. 15 A number of other anthropologists and ethnohistorians
as fosterage. Written records themselves can be used to extend genealogies back- have used wills, notarial records, and other legal documents to reconstruct residence
ward and to evaluate ethnographic statements. Thus, a shorter time depth for some patterns, family relations and values, as well as changing attitudes toward death and
family lines can be set against the statement "We have always been here" and lead religion (Obeyesekere 1967; Davis 1973; Goody et al. 1976; Aries 1981; Behar
the anthropologist to a more considered evaluation of the real and symbolic 1986; Cline 1986; Brettell 1991), and a broad range of court records have been
SignIficance of the statement itself (1981: I0). analyzed to shed light on the structure and meaning of colonialism in places such
as India and Africa (Mann and Roberts 1991; Cohn 1996).
 522 BRETTELL Fieldwork in the Archives 523

Maddox's (1993) history of the dyoamics of local sociopolitical relations i " more than another ethnographic case. It contributes to theory building: "We have
southern Spanish town from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries is painte: ia; a particular view of how meaningful understandings are reached-not by macro
m,uch broad:r brushstrokes than the local histories produced by GaIt and Rosenber:, studies, quantitative analysis and modelling, but by careful and controlled com-
It s divIded mto three phases. Maddox addresses the themes of religion, honor, and} parison in the context of a cross-cultural method which uses empirical case studies
patronage and how they shaped a local ethos during the traditional phase of th' of agents, networks, resources, and interests" (p. 341).16
Ancien Regime. Local history is tied into the national history of formal chart e:
" TillS phase of tradition and dominatio e~
exacte d tn'b ute, an d external authonty. .'
d' I d ' h . n IS
ISP ace In t e nmeteenth and early twentieth centuries by the forces of agr . .. . Big Problems in Small Places: The Global Perspective in
. I' d .. anan,
~ap~ta I.srn an a CriSIS among the rural aristocracy and within ecclesiastical': Political Economic History
instItutions.
. The final phase covers the period of "tradition liberalized"
, whe ncassI
socIety was reformed after the Spanish Civil War. Of methodological distinctio . The local histories discussed in the previous section illustrate one of the major
Maddox's ~ppr.oach i.s his frequent use of key historical, literary, or religious t:x: differences between history and anthropological history noted by Cohn (1980:220).
to ballast hiS discussIOn of the relationship between forms of discourse and t "The units of study in anthropological history should be cultural and culturally
of life at different periods in the history of the town of Aracena. orms derived: power, authority, exchange, reciprocity, codes of conduct, systems of social
Perhaps the most remarkable recent example of a localized study in historical classification, the construction of time and space, rituals. One studies these in a
anthropology over the longue duree is Gulliver and Silvennan's (1995) analysis of particular place and over time, but the study is about the construction of cultural
shopk~epers and merchants III the southeast Irish market town of Thomastown from categories and the process of that construction, not about place and time." Although
the mid-seventeenth century to the present. The time frame they tackle requires some may quibble with Cohn's statement, it is perhaps best illustrated by those
them to .deal with varying qualities of data and to make creative linkages between studies that adopt a macro and global historical perspective.
one peflod. and the next. They offer a historical study "which increases in Any number of historical anthropologists work with this perspective. Thus,
cthn?graphlc ~eta.i1 and analytica~ depth as we come closer to the present, as Friedrich's (1977:ix) study of the community ofNaranja in Mexico is really about
archival matcnals Improve, and as held data intersect with archival data" (p. 9). Tax "the origin and growth of agrarian reform and agrarian politics, the formation of all
records, I~nd surveys, and a census offer insight into the local experience of the agrarian ideology, and of the techniqucs of agrnrian rcvolt." To cngage in this study,
Cromw,el!lan c~nquest. and how the population became divided along ethnic and he reconstructs the past of the late nineteenth century through both ethnological
status hnes. Paflsh registers provide information on the rise and fall of population, methods (interviews with older natives, internal analysis of present-day life of the
and data fro~ deeds help to develop a picture of changing economic conditions as community, and comparisons with other Tarascan pueblos) and research in
well as the hIStory of local enterprises. government and agrarian archives. A significant portion of the book focuses on a
Once ?ull~ver a~d Silvennan's narrative is situated in the nineteenth century, biographical history of the revolutionary leader Primo Tapia. In a subsequent
com merc.131 directOrIes, town plans, shop book accounts, minute books of the Board volume, Friedrich (1986) outlines his "anthrohistorical methods" more fully. This
of Guardians ~nd Rural ?is~rict Councils, and county newspapers are brought into is one of the most intriguing statements on linking local, regional and national
play to descnbe a flounshlOg local economy built on retailing. The discussion historical discourse, as well as on the interpretation of "shattered bits" of
culmlOates 10 a chapter on the political-economy of Thomastown from 1840-1991 ethnography in general.
that addresses and challenges ~nalytical models such as core-periphery and the By far the majority of those historical anthropologists who address the big
geography of domlOatlOn. ThIS IS followed by treatment of family entrepreneurship problem in small places are looking at the impact of culture contact, colonialism,
and other aspects of kmshlp and heirship. Case histories of three family enterprises" and capitalist and state penetration (Wallace 1972, 1981; Schneider and Schneider
based on a metho~ of recor~ IIO~age and reconstruction from a variety of archival 1976, 1996; Comaroff 1985; Dirks 1987; Gailey 1987; Silverblatt 1987; Hansen
sources, from famIly oral hlStones, a~d from infonnants' accounts, offer depth to" 1989; Linnekin 1991; Kahn 1993). One of the best examples of such work is
the more general staustlcal analySIS. Gulliver and Silvennan conclude that " Roseberry's (1983) Marxist analysis of the fonnation and transformation, over four
Thomastown, w~!le located.spatially at the margins of Europe, neverthelessoccupies centuries, of a property-owning, commodity-producing Venezuelan peasantry. He
a central place at a part.lcular level in an evolving hierarchy of domination" is interested in elevating local facts to the level of world-historical facts, al1d thus
(1995:339). Thomastown, 10 their view, is neither typical nor unique. Its history is writes a history that deepens our understanding of the capitalist mode of production
and uneven capitalist development (p. 202). Roseberry draws on local documents
524 BREHELL Fieldwork ill the Archives 525

dealing with land use and land rights, the files of a local coffee cooperative, local. ' mentary, or a combination of both, Marshall Sahlins's (1981) exploration of the
dQCU , h'
newspapers, municipal tax records, census data for the twentieth century, and a host) death of Captain Cook is a good example of this method, as IS IS more recent
of secon~a~ so~rces to write ~his sweep!ng history of transformation. Secondary', I sis of the Fijian War of 1843-1855 (Sahlins 1991), but there are others,
sources, m his View, are essential to the historical anthropologist who must wrestle,' ~i~~ent (1992) relies on documentary sources-published and unpubUshed reports
with the tension between a national and a local history, Roseberry describes his' cal and national commissions, reconstructed genealogles and family hlstones,
oasf well
I0
as on an examination of material culture~to explore tI le'~m~act 0 fa 'sing Ie
method as follows: "It is the application of a theoretical framework to a particular,
situation, the modification of that framework as the data I was gathering presented; . 'dent involving a board meeting of the guardians of the Enmskillen Poor Law
surprises, and the search for new data as the theoretical revisions suggested new ~~~on that shaped the response to the famine in one Irish county, Collier (1987)
questions" (p, 212), draws extensively on oral history (supplemented with archival so~rces) to d?C~me~lt
Richard Fox (1985) adopts a somewhat different approach in his analysis nfhow c the effects of a series of political assassinations on the constructIon of SOCIalism III
beliefs about the racial division of humankind shaped British attitudes toward the " the southern Spanish community of Los Olivos.
Sikhs in early twentieth-century Punjab, licensed the treatment ofSinghs (Lions) as " Certainly, Victor Turner's (1957, 1974) concept of social drama and his
a separate species, rationalized and constructed colonial oppression, and caused the ';: extended case-study method have much in common with the method of even~­
Singh Sabha protest movement Relying largely on secondary sources, Fox analyzes; centered analysis, Taylor (1983) draws on Turner's method to develop hIS
"the peculiar historical conjunction of material conditions and cultural meanings that ';~ ethnohistorical analysis of a Dutch immigrant community in New England. He
constituted the politicill ecollomy of the Punjab in the first decades of the twentieth,' focuses lhis cthnohistory on two prolonged disputes, each with its moments of
century" ( 1985: 10). Ultim<1tely, however, he writes <1 history about the construction dramatic confrontation, each with its leading actors, extras, and cameo-roles. In his
?f identity .in situations of culture contact where a particular region is progressively discussion or the advantages of this method as applied to history, T<Iylor notes the
Inlegrated mto the world economy. Fox argues that members of the dom inalcd class "opp0l1unitics for exploring (I) the underlying normative conflicts that may be
appropriate the hegemonic model of the dominant class and alter and use it in their} generating such observable confrontations; (2) the manner in whic.h individua.ls
resistance. This leads him to a conceptual "re-situation" of the concept of culture :, manipulate nonns in pursuance of self-interest; and (3) the collective, symbolic
itself as always in a state of becoming. This is his affirmation of "a history that)' assertion of a moral order as over against the disorder of life" (1983: J 85).1&
engages the particulars of systems of domination and their relevant cultural codes ,0 Turner is also a key figure in the development of symbolic anthropology, and his
a history whose objective is "to explain real social processes and practices, carri;d;·: method of symbolic analysis, broadly conceived, has been successfully applied to
on and developed over time in social actions" (p. 206). history by some anthropologists, The best example is Ohnuki-Tiemey's (1987,
Ortner (1989) also weaves the perspectives of political economy and culture ;. 1990b) exploration of the changing meaning of the monkey as a metaphor for the
together in what she calls an ethnographic history that outlines not only the impact 't self in Japanese culture from the eighth century to the present. Documentary
of the state, colonialism or capitalism but also how this impact is interpreted at the sources, including ancient texts and folktales, reveal, for example, that the dominant
receiving end. 17 Anthropologists, she argues, "must use the cultural frames and meaning of monkey as mediator in the medieval period was transformed into the
structural contradictions of the local society as a kind of lens through which to view" monkey as scapegoat by the early modem period, By the modem period, another
the practices and politics of the larger system because it is these cultural frames and . meaning, the monkey as clown, had emerged. These transfonnations, Ohnuki-
structural contradictions that mediate both the meaning and the impact of the larger >': Tiemey argues, coincided with major transitions in Japanese history.
political and economic forces in question" (p, 83). Mid-thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Japan was characterized by political
chaos, and unprecedented mobility, flexibility, and openness to foreigners. By the
early modem period, however, a consolidation process resulted in a highly stratified
Historical Applications of Etlmographic Methods and less dynamic society that was closed to outsiders. It was only in the late
nineteenth century that Japan again opened itself up to the outside world, heralding
of Analysis
another period of change, 19
Some anthropologists have engaged history by adapting the method of evenl- . Horwitz draws on an ethnoscientific methodology to discover "the cultural
centeredanalysis (Pelto and Pelto 1978:200-208; Fogelson 1989), The focus o[their ' Context of social relations in a nineteenth century community" (1978:27), His
research is on a single event and its lasting impact on a local community or approach is based on semantic analysis and proceeds from an examination of
population. Depending on the historical depth of the event the sources are oral, primary sources to record tenns of reference or address, and the contexts within
 Fieldwork in the Archives 527
526 UREITI:LL

Gmelch 1991; Behar 1993; BretteIl1995), there are also some publications that deal
which they are used. He then develops a set of domains or a taxonomy of the t \ with it more directly (Langness 1965; Bertaux 1981; Bertaux and Kohli 1984;
ofstatement~ that, through an analysis of components, lead to general princiPI~~~; Crapanzano 1984; Watson and Watson-Franke 1985; Behar 1990; Rosenwald and
social organizatIOn. 0 Ochberg 1992; Linde 1993). Langness and Frank (1981), in particular, offer
In a somewhat different vein, discourse is also the focus of the historical work .'. numerous suggestions for how to handle the problem of reliability and how to
of Taylor (1992) and Comaroff and Comaroff (1992). The Comaroffs analyze the' supplement life history data with other kinds of data in order to arrive at a more
chronicles of Non-Confonnlst miSSions in South Africa and expand their anal . ' complete understanding. Certainly, many of the concerns that pertain to participant
t th' .. YSIS
o 0 er written sources, Includmg newspapers and official publications no I :: observation more generally-rapport, language facility, interviewing techniques,
I d' . ' ve S"
Pcpu ar songs, rawtn~s, and children's games. Through discourse analysis, they can~; and ethics-are equally pertinent to the collection of life histories.
~race the transformation of a text such that a single, consistent, and coherent '"~, Although life histories have been used to study personality, to examine the rela-
Ideology emerges fr~m disp~r~te voices and modes of expression. Taylor applies the;~ tionship of an individual to his or her society or culture, or to explore the "phenom-
method to ~n analysIs ~f re.hglOus narratives (a folk story, a magazine piece, and a/ enology of subjective experience" (Watson and Watsoll-Franke 1985), in the context
Red~mptor.lst sermon) 1Il.llIneteenth-century Donegal to arrive at a more complete of this essay we need to ask about the nature of the life history as a historical
undc.rstand1l1g o~ competing cultural and social realities and regimes. method. Here, the conceptual distinctions outlined by Peacock and Holland (1993)
Fmally: me~tlOn should be made of the comparative method used successfully are useful. They contrast a life-focllsedapproach with a story-focused approach. One
by ethnohlstonans who ~raw comparisons across time based on certain assumptio treats the narrated life as a window on objective facts of historical and ethnographic
about cUlt.ural. and socIal regularities under similar conditions (Chance 199;)~ events, and the other focuses on the subjective experiences of narrator. Issues of
Among hlstoncal anthropologists, this method has been used by Eric Wolf validity come into play in the first case, but the emphasis is largely on the way that
throughoul hIS career for both micro- (1957; Cole and Wolf 1974) and macrolevel change can be documented through its impact on individual lives. However, the
studIes (1982) and by Goody (1983) in his sweeping study of the development of second perspective is equally relevant to historical analysis. Indeed, historians have
mar~Jag~ and the family in Europe. However, Clark (1992) has called for its wider borrowed the life history method to gain access to an inside vil:w of slavery among
appl ~catlon, ~nd Ilan~en ( 19.89) .su~gcsts, rather than rigorously pursues, the idea that women in East, West, and Central Africa (Alpers 1983~ Strobel 1983~ Wright 1993),
~lcr study.ot d?mestlc scrvI~e Itl Zambia can cast a critical light on similar issues colonialism in East Africa (Le Vine 1979), caste and ethnicity in Central Africa
In .the United States and ultimately contribute to our understanding of the place of (Codere 1973), labor among Chinese women (Sheridan and Salaff 1987), or migra-
paid household work under the economic conditions of advanced capitalism. tion between the wars in Europe (Bertaux-Wiame 1982).2'
Generated by the anthropologist in interaction and dialogue with an infonnant in
the field, life histories are similar to a range of other personal or subjective
Life History documents-letters, diaries, autobiographies, oral narratives-used by historians to
reveal the participant's view of the experiences in which he or she has been
Any discussion of historical methods in anthropology must address the life history. involved (Yans McLaughlin 1990; Maynes 1992; West 1992). Recently, Graff
Although a form of oml historical data, a life history is distinct in being an (1994) has assembled a useful bibliography of works using such sources. Some of
extensIve record "of a person's life told to and recorded by another, who then edits these works may provide useful guidelines for the anthropologist who wants to
and wntes the hfe as though it were autobiography" (Langness 1965:4~5).
juxtapose life history material with documented life stories.
EmergIng from research to recaplure the past of Native American populations,
the. hfed'
11ISlory method
. flOUrIShed during the 1920s ' 1930s , and 1940sancu-d I
mmate In a Socml. Science .Research Council seminar focusing on the use of
Oral History
personal documents In the SOCIal sciences (Gottschalk et al. 1947) As th d f
h j"fi h' . a me 0 0
res~ar~., 1 e ..1stOry has been controversial, largely because of questions of The life history provides one form of oral historical data, but oral history itself has
:ehablhty, vahdlty, a~d represent~tiveness.These questions led to its dwindling use much broader applications, The pioneer in using oral history among "people without
In the postw~r years.· .How~ver, m r~cent years life histories have reemerged, to a history" was Jan Vansina. Working in Africa, Vansina argued that oral traditions are
large extent In connectIOn WIth refleXIve and feminist anthropologies. Although the as solid an historical source as any other, especially when they can be evaluated
method can be studied Indirectly by looking at specific ethnographic applications through comparisons with written records, archaeological evidence, and linguistic
(Crapanzano 1980; Shostak 1981; Blackman 1982; Friedrich 1986; Kendall 1988;
 528 BRETfELL 529
Fieldwork in the Archives

patterns (1970, 1985). Vansina outlined a range of oral traditions: slogans and Mintz compares oral tradition with the documentation. in anarchist and local
fannulas; ~Iace names; official and private poetry; stories; and legal and other':'> newspapers, parliamentary debates and reports, letters and Journals, and chu~ch and
commentanes.
court records. The written record contains the narratives of the well-born, while oral
. In the post-Vansina era, a ".umber of historians have produced volumes deaJing~" accounts and traditions belong to the campesino. The first narrative portrays the
wIth the methods of oral hIStory (Grele 1975; Hoopes 1979; Henige 1982;, monks of the Cannelite monastery in Casas Viejas as spiritual nourishers; the other
Thompson 1988; Dunaway and Baum 1996). These works tackle such issues as the '. as oppressors. Similarly, one account attributes the decline of the local monastery
relationship between history and oral history, the authority of the story teller the in the early nineteenth century to the French invasion; the other suggests that the
interv~ew process, ba~ancing subjectivity and obje~tivity, and problems of editing decline was the result of the lust and rivalry of the monks themselves (p. 77).
and biaS. The oral history method has been applied to economic history, labor In a study of narratives of the Kiondike goldrush, Cruikshank (1992) contrasts
hi~to~, the history of sci.e~ce, social, hist?ry, family history, and women's history. the western story of expansion, individualism, and hegemony with the native nar-
HIstonans generally elicIt oral hlstones using a rather ronnal method of rative of resilience and assertion of autonomy. 2J In commenting on the value of the
i~terviewing. Many anthropologists do the same, but some weave together oral oral account as opposed to the written record, she suggests that "the exercise . ..
hIstOry from nonnarrative oral traditions-infonnaI discussions, passing comments is less one of straightening out facts than of identifying how such cognitive models
and daily verbal interactions (Taylor 1983; Besteman 1993).22 ' may generate different kinds of social analysis, leading to different interpretatio~s
An examination of works in historical ethnography that draw on oral history of a given event, one of which is included in official history while the other IS
reveals a common thread in the emphasis on a dialogue between data gathered relegated to collective memory" (p. 22).
through oral history and that collected in the archives so that "The meaning of each Ortner (1989), in her ethnohistory of high religion among the Sherpas of Nepal,
set of data [is] satisfactorily elucidated only with reference to the other" (Rogers describes a somewhat different experience with the multivocality of history as it
1992:25). Thus, one aim of the dialogic approach is to arrive at a more complete derives from the juxtaposition of oral tradition and the written record. She collected
record of an event or historical structure. Stockard (1989) elicited oral histories (or stories and personal memories from individuals who could talk about the foundation
what she calls retrospective interviews) with 150 elderly women to document an of the monasteries and temples that were part of their history. In the process, she
unorthodox marriage pattern (delayed transfer marriage) that was characteristic of " unearthed an emic view of authoritative knowledge-although she wanted a variety
the population of the Canton Delta in traditional times and that was produced in; of views, she was consistently referred to the lamas who "really knew.".This his-
aSSOCIatIOn wIth SIlk cultIvatIOn. In fact, a project that was initially intended to focus torical work made much more sense to her informants than did her earlier ethno-
on the present turned to a focus on the past because of a casual comment made by graphic work and infonnation was therefore easier to obtain. What wa~ more
an informant. To verify th~ accounts that were coming from oral history, Stockard challenging was the construction of narrative history from the shreds of eVIdence.
began to exam me other wntten records-gazetteers,missionary accounts, histories, Perhaps the most masterful works in this dialogic genre are Richard Price's
travel literature-in search of a "confinnation" of the oral accounts. monumental volumes First-Time and A/aM's World. First-Time, for the Saramaka
Another aim of this dialogic juxtaposition of oral history and the written record of Surinam, is the sacred history of their fonnative years. It was not a subject open
is to access different voices and different interpretations of the same historical to Price during his initiai fieldwork. Only after several years in the field was he able
experience. There are numerous examples of the application of this method (Stolcke to broach the subject with the elders to whom he offered his own sense of history
1988; Poyer 1994). For example, Hoehler-Fatton (1996) uses (or as she says, gleaned from archives in the Netherlands. He elicited this oral history ofFlfst-TIme
"privileges") oral tradition to access the contributions of women 'to the rise of from a number of elders under conditions that made them feel comfortabie talking
charismatic Christian movements among the Luo of western Kenya during the about something they did not like to share with outsiders.
colonial era. "Although colonial and missionary reports may be more reliable a~1ar Price's method (1983) is to focus on the event. ''Taking fragments (often a mere
as basic chronology is concerned, they highlight the activities of male leaders phrase) from many different men, comparing them, discussing them with oth~rs,
excIusi.vely. When women are mentioned in these written texts, it is usually in challenging them against rival accounts, and eventually holding them up agamst
collective (and dismissive) terms. As we will see, women have always been the contemporary written evidence, I try to begin to develop a picture of what the most
backb~ne of this popular religion. A history that is silent with respect to their knOWledgeable Saramakas collectively know, and why they know and preserve it"
actIVItIes would be seriously skewed" (Hoehler-Fatton 1996:8). (p. 25). He applies the same method to the incomplete written record, carefully
Different class-based historical narratives are the focus of Jerome Mintz's (1982) considering "a complicated bundle of evidence, often including apparently contrary
study of the anarchist rebellion in Casas Viejas, Spain in the early twentieth century.
 Fieldwork in the Archives 53/
530 BRETfELL

facts ... which I am ultimately able to dismiss by critical consideration of th~" ome Of her representations of monkey symbolism on lacquerware boxes.
fin ds s .I I "W
sources" (p. 40). .:: Schneider and Schneider (1996:94) actually mention a matena cu ture survey. e
In the comparisons that he made with written evidence, he was consistently asked elderly people of different class backgrounds to tell ~s ho~ their. parents and
aware of the risk of establishing a canonical or authorized version of Saramaka d arents lived, illustrating their accounts wherever posSlble with arufacts of past
gran p . "
history. His solution was to publish his book with varying type faces so that the two' households wardrobes, and occupatIOns.
histories-both equally fragmented-could be kept distinct. His second book,' Visual i~ages (paintings, photographs, sculpture) are also part of material culture
A/abi's World, focuses on the period from 1762 forward and draws on a range of d hence a valuable source for writing history (Szabo 1994). Perlmutter (1994)
new written sources that are unavailable for the earlier period. In it, he continues' an t th t the visual historian can ask about the social and historical forces that
sugges s a . ., ., Id' I f
the method of juxtaposing voices-that of the Saramakas, that of Moravian mis.'. . fluenced the origin production, dlssemmatlOn, functIon, Ideo ogy an survlva 0
sionaries, that of Dutch colonial officials, and that of the ethnographic historian;. ~sual images and h~W the images themselves may have influenced and shaped
~and hence histories. Forthe ethnographic historian, Price suggests, the goal should)' thinking and events. He outlines a series of mea~mgs.that ~an be ex,Plored In the
be "to penetrate existential worlds different from his own and to evoke their texture, ':~ analysis of images, including productio~, content l?enttficatlOn, func~lOnal, expres-
by bridging, but never losing sight of, the cultural and semantic gulf that separates: sional, figurative, rhetorical moral, socIetal o~ pen~d, and comparattv~.
the anthropologist from the historical actors and from the historical observers (those' While historians have been using such vIsual tmages ~or some tIme, only a
who create the sources) which themselves possess and represent complex prior handful of historical ethnographers have moved beyond written sources. John and
histories" (Price 1990:xix). .j Jean Comaroff found this a necessary avenue to the unheard votces.. Methodo-
logically, the dominant narrative comm~nd~d ~hem "'-to peruse the coloOlzmg gesture
beyond audible ideologies and visible mstltutlOns toto the r~al~ of such unspoke~
Material Culture and Visual Images forms as bodies, buildings, magic, and merchandise, And thIS, In turn: took us back
to our archives-to letters, lists, illustrations, and photographs-albelt now less fO:,
Perhaps inspired by the archaeological branch of their discipline, some historical,. what they declared than for what they disclosed as maps of the mundane
anthropologists have looked to material culture as a valuable source for the writing (Comaroffand Comaroff 1992:36). The Comaroffs cal! for historical ethnographers
of history. An equally important stimulus to this approach is the work of the French to construct their own archive. "As anthropologists, ... we ~ust work both I.n and
social historian Marc Bloch, whose book Caracteres originaux de I'histoire rurale'~ outside the official record, both with and beyond the guardians of memory In the
fram;aise was originally published in Paris in 1931 and eventually translated into " societies we study" (p. 34),
English under the title French Rural History (Bloch 1966). Bloch drew on every·
thing from serial maps to plows to write the history of rural France. One of the "-
earliest anthropological examples of the use of material culture to write history is" Conclusion: Linking the Past to the Present and
Kroeber and Richardson's (1940) careful examination of cycles of change in the History to Ethnography
style of women's clothing in Europe across a 300-year period. They link these
changes to periods of stress and crisis. In the preface to her study of domestic workers in. Zambia, Karen Ha~sen
More recently, Cohn (1996) has explored the relationship between cloth, clothes, (1989:xiii) describes the calculated leaps that she took lrom the documents 01 the
and colonialism in nineteenth~century India. 24 Mintz (1985) has used cookbooks as past to observations in the present and from Zambia's capital to the metropolitan
a window on the tastes of the nineteenth-century English working class, and United States, She suggests that these leaps, and the sacrifice of detail to theoretical
Frykman and Lofgren (1987) draw, among otherthings, on an analysis of domestic insights, might make the historian wince. However, they are the leaps often ~ade
space to access the culture of the Swedish bourgeoisie between 1880 and 1910. by anthropologists who enter the archives through th~ ba~k door of ethn?graph~.
Fernandez (1990) and Behar (1986) also "read" domestic spaces for what they tell One of the ways in which historical anthropology IS dIfferent from history IS
us about the past. McDonogh (1986) carefully analyzes the opera house and cem· precisely in the effort to link the past to the present.
eteries to study the urban elite of nineteenth-century Barcelona. On a more global In an earlier article (Brettel! 1992), 1 explored a number of important issues that
scale, Goody (1993) also makes extensive use of cemeteries, as well as other ancient arise from this linkage. 1 noted that the method of participant-observatlOn can
monuments and works of art, to produce his massive study of the symbolic and generate relevant questions for historical research and that patterns of soctal
transactional use of flowers across time and space. Even Ohnuki-Tierney (1990b) relations that the anthropologist sees on the ground can be suggesttve In formulatIng
 532 BREITELL
Fieldwork in the Archives 533

hypotheses about social interaction in the past I also noted th t h' t . I

b. . a IS Orlca resear h 4. Simultaneously, there was a turn toward anthropology among some historians.
can nng us to a clearer understanding of the relationship between the id I de:; Exemplary works include Andaya (1993), Bynum (1992), Darnton (1984), Davis (1975), and
actual, as well as of the idealization of the past." To these Gulliver (I98ge;3;~ the" Isaac( 1982). Davis (1981 :267) notes four aspects that make anthropology useful to historians:
the use of Informants to "flesh out the facts of a government report a' cl d adds observations of living processes of social interaction; interesting ways of interpreting
~lewspaper article" .or the use. of an historical document to jog the' me~leO Or a . symbolic behavior; suggestions about how the parts of a social system fit together; and a
mfo~ants or provIde the basIs for an interview or a discussion Seh "d ry of. c:omparative framework. Recently, several historians of Africa have discussed their own
Schneider (1996) used a similar method to help them interpret vi~al re n~slte~: :nd 1 methods of fieldwork (Adenaike and Vansina 1996). On this latter topic, also see the pages
g
household files and understand fully the practice of coitus interruptus I tl nd_~ of the journal Ifistory in Africa.
Ath h . nlepast· 5. Silverman and Gulliver (1992:55) refer to a place "called Thepast, that has been added
s e nograp ers, we brmg a broad range of methods into the field S' 'I'
methods can be applied to our fieldwork in the archives. Indeed it ha ar. 1:1 to the list of exotic places in which anthropologists may do fieldwork."
suggested that the objective of historical work should be good ethno~ra h s,,~~n, 6. Blok (1992: 123) argues that "the ambiguity of the term 'history' still hovers over the
means fin~m~ ways of seeing regularities in the evidence of specific :v;~ts an:" heads of anthropologists, for whom 'history' primarily signifies the past (and representations
:vtn ayswhIch
?f brmglOg together documents of individual lives and the societal rocess
they are embedded" (Silverman 1986:125). p es
of the past) but leaves little room for historiography." For an interesting discussion by a
historian of the application of a meaning-centered ethnographic method to history, see Isaac
(1982). For one of the few thorough discussions of methods by a historical anthropologist see
. In ~ummary, It see~ls that work in historical anthropology follows one of two Gulliver (1989). llcrnard (1994: 1) outlines three different meanings of the word "method":
directIOns, each of which calls for distinct kinds of methods of resea h d . h • (I) an epistemology-how we know things; (2) a set of strategic choices-whether to do
f I' h' . rc an nelt er
o w lIC IS, necessarily, .mutually e.xclusiveofthe other. For some, to be a historical ~ participant observation fieldwork, library research, experimental research; (3) and a set of
ethnog~aph~r means to mterp~et. historical events through the eyes of others. The research techniques-how and what kind of sample to select, whether to do face-to-face or
ethnohlstoncal method, DeMallhe argues, is aimed at "understanding the t"ts telephone interviews, etc. These three meanings arc interconnected, hence all are part of my
own te f d' h pas m I
. . nus, 0 re~ mg t e record of the past in a manner that as fully and ver. use of the word "methods" in this chapter.
ISlmI1arly as 'pOSSIble represents events as they were perceived by the actor d 7. Roseberry (1989:5) notes that there are a "variety of anthropologists appropriating a
then uses thl;, knowledge to write culturally grounded histories and hist~r~al variety of histories." The political-economy approach of Eric Wolf-one that explores the
ethnographles (1993:553). For others, the major focus of historical anthropology" construction of economic and political inequality within a global system-is quite different
IS cross-cultural and comparative understanding of the social pol,'tl'cal . from the cultural approach of Clifford Geertz or the structuralist approach of Marshall
and It I ' , economiC, Sahlins. Ortner (1989) describes a bifurcation of historical anthropology into political
cu ura processes that characterize human behavior in the past as well as in the
present. economy. on the one hand, and structural or ethnographic history, on the other.
8. A heated debate has emerged about whether the apotheosis of Captain Cook was linked
to a Hawaiian myth or to European assumptions about native modes of thought, and hence
to European myth making (Obeyesekere 1992; Sahlins 1995; Borofsky 1997). This debate has
NOTES raised intriguing questions about native voice and agency and about the nature of historical
anthropological research and explanation itself. I return to this debate in the next section of
~ I thh~nk Dennis Cor~elL Bonnie Wheeler, Jeremy Adams, Russ Bernard, and David Kertzer the paper. For further discussion of the relationships between myth and history, see Hill
or t elr careful readmg of the first draft of this chapter.
(1988)
I. Early historians looked at the non-Western world in a similar wa K h . t
Trevor R . I' I ' y. rec po lOtS 0 9. Trigger also offers an excellent discussion of how ethnohistory differs from
oper se aim t lat only the Illstory of Europeans in Africa was worthwhile because conventional history, inclUding its reliance on the auxiliary fields of archaeology, physical
the rest was largely darkness. "Wc should not amuse ourselves wl'th unr d' ,_.
rb I ". ewar mg gyration$> anthropology, and linguistics. For another discussion or the interaction between archaeology
o ar )~rous Iflbcs III picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe" (T R 1965>
quoted m Krech 1991:345). revor oper • and historical ethnography. see Kirch and Sahlins (1992).
2 10. In fact, anthropologists would be wise to begin their hislorical work by consulting
196 . According to Chance (1996), anthropologists working in Mesoamerica in the 1950s and several general books about history and the historian's craft, among them E. H. Carr's (1961)
Os were also slow to exploit the rich historical documents available to them
classic What Is History, Mark Bloch's (1984; orig. 1954) The Historian's Craft. and, more
3. For a recent review of the state of ethnohistory. see Krech (1991). . recently, the co-authored volume by Appleby, Hunt, and lacob (1994). The latter volume
tackles the diverse voices of history in the age ofmulticulturalism and the nature of historical
truth and historical objectivity. The authors also deal with the textuality of historical texts and
 Fieldwork in the Archives 535
534 BRETTELL

with problems of linguistic translation. Of equal importance is an exploration of the work or'~ 25. Birdwell~Pheasant (1992) also focuses on the difference betw~en i~eal and a~tual in
ethnohistorians who have occasionally written about the topic of source evaluation. See, for' ~ 'deration of the Irish stem family For discussions by hlstonans of their own
~reconsl ' . , 6
example, Moister (1980), Moore and Campbell (1989), and Trigger (1976)" attempts to link the present to the past, see the essays in Adenalke and VanslOa (199 ).
11. Many of these methods, and others, are discussed in the pages of the joum~';
Historical Methods. This journal is an invaluabk source for those anthropologists interested ":.•
in exploring modes of analysis that can be applied la historical data. See, for example, ;;: . REFERENCES
Ruggles (1993) for a more recent discussion of simulation models in demographic and family,?
history. And see Cordell el al. (1996) for a discussion of how various sources, including "~~ Adams, John W., 1982. Anthropology and History in the 19805: Consensus, Corn·
retrospective migration surveys, were used to develop a social history ora migration system ',~ munity, and Exoticism. In The New History: The 1980s. and Beyo~d. Theodor.e
in West Africa. K. Rabb and Robert 1. Rotberg, eds. Pp. 253-265. Pnnceton: Pnnceton Um-
12. Those who want to explore the original discussion of the methods of nominal record versity Press.
linkage and family reconstitution should consult the works of Louis Henry (1956, 1967). Adams, John W., and Alice B. Kasakoff. 1980. Migration at Marriage in Colonial N.c\V
Schneider and Schneider (1996:90ft) offer some useful comments on the problems of dealing England: A Comparison of Rates Derived from Genealogies with Rates .from Vital
with out-migration. Records. In Genealogical Demography. Bennett Dyke and Warren T. MomB, eds. Pp.
13. Kertzer (1984) provides a weJI·reasoned assessment of the positive and negative?: 115-138. New York: Academic Press.
aspects of the comparative household typology developed by Hammel and Laslett. He and Adenaike, Carolyn Keyes, and Jan Vansina, eds. 1996. In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in
other anthropologists (Brettell 1986) have modified the typology to suit local variations in" A/rica. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
household composition and patterns of coresidence. The Appendix in Kertzer and Hogan Ahern, Emily. 1976. Segmentation in Chinese Lineages: A View Through Written Gene-
(1989) offers a rare explication of the range of sources used and the methods of record!
alogies. American Ethnologist 3:1-15.
linkage applied to the construction of an individual-level database; it is well worth reading. ';\
Alpers, Edward. 1983. The Story of Swema: A Note on Female Vulnerability in Ninete~nth.
14. See, however, Wells (1978) for a cautionary note on constructing cohorts in historical
Century East Africa. In Women and Slavery in A/rica. Claire C. Robertson and Martm A.
demographic research.
Klein, eds. Pp. 185-219. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
15. See Steckel (1994) for further discussion on the use of tax lists.
Alter, George. 1988. Family and the Female Life Course: The Women o/Verviers, Belgium,
16. A complete and extremely interesting discussion of the sources and methods used by
/849-1880. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Gulliver and Silverman, as well as ajustificalion for close, local~levd investigation can be
found in Gulliver (1989). Andaya, Leonard. 1993. The World 0/ Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in the Early Afodern
17. Additional examples of a historical anthropology method that approaches political ;.. Period. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
economy from a culturalist position are Linnekin (1991) and Collier (1987). ," Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and MargaretJacob. t 994. Te/ling the TruthAbout History. New
18. Taylor (1985) applies a similar method in a study of estate agents and priests in latc York: W. W. Norton.
nineteenth-century Ireland. For a critique of Turner's ideas, as applied to historical material, Aries, Philippe. 1981. The Hour o/Our Death. New York: Knopf.
sec Bynum (1984; reprinted in Bynum 1992). Dehar, Ruth. 1986. Santa Maria del Monte: The Presence a/the Past in a Spanish Village.
19. For other examples of the application of symbolic analysis, see Fernandez (1990) and Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hawkins (1984), Dehar, Ruth. 1990. Rage and Redemption: Reading the Life Story of a Mexican Marketing
20. One major exception was the work of Oscar Lewis, specifically The Children of : Woman. Feminist Studies 16: 223-258.
Sanchez (1959) and Five Families (1961). Dehar, Ruth. 1993. Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza 's Story. Boston:
21. For an interesting methodological statement, sce Townsend (1990). Beacon Press.
22. See the introduction in Pitkin (1985) for a useful discussion of the methods of oral Bemard, H. Russell. 1994. Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative
history applied to family history. Of interest also is Elizabeth Tonkin's (1992) book on the Approaches, 2d ed. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
social construction of oral history.
Benaux, Daniel, ed. 1981. Biography and Society: The Life lfistory Approach in the Social
23. The historian Luise White (1995) uses similar methods of juxtaposition, comparing
Sciences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
oral accounts of African rumors that white people captured Africans and took their blood to
Benaux, Daniel, and Martin Kohli. 1984. The Life Story Approach: A Continental View.
medical missionary writings about the triumph of Western biomedicine.
24. See Weiner and Schneider (1989) for other explorations of cloth and culture.
Annual Review 0/ Sociology 10:215-237.
 Fieldwork in the Archives 537
536 BRETTELL

Bertaux-Wiame, Isabelle. 1982. The Life History Approach to the Study of Internal Migra~ Caroline Walker. 1992. Fragmentation (md Redemption: Essays on Gender and the
Byn um ,
tion: How Women and Men Came to Paris Between the Wars. In Our Common History: Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books.
The Transformation ofEurope. Paul Thompson and Natasha Burchardt, eds. Pp. 186--199. Carr, Edward Hallett. 1961. What Is History? New York: Vintage Books.
Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Chance, John K. 1996. Mesoamerica's Ethnographic Past. Ethnohistory 43:379-403..
Besteman. Catherine. 1993. Public History and Private Knowledge: On Disputed History in Clark, Samuel. 1992. Historical Anthropology, Historical Sociology, a~d the Makmg of
Southern Somalia. Ethnohistory 40:563-586. Modern Europe. In Approaching the Past: Historical Anthropology Ihrough Irish Ca~e
Biersack, Aletta. 1989. Local Knowledge. Local History: Geertz and Beyond. In The New Studies. Marilyn Silverman and P. H. GuIliver, eds. Pp. 324-351. New York: Columbia
Cultural History. Lyon Hunt, ed. Pp. 72-96. Berkeley: University of California Press. University Press.
Uicrsack, Aletla, ed. 1991. Clio in Oceania: Toward a Historical Anthropoiogy. Washington, (line, S. L. 1986. Colonial Cullwacan, 1580--1600. A Social History of an Aztec Town.
DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Albuqucrque: University of New Mexico Press.
Birdwell-Pheasant, Donna. 1992. The Early Twentieth-Century Irish Stem Family: A Case Codere, Helen. 1973. Tlte Biography ofan African Society. Rwanda, 1900-1960. Tervuern,
Study from County Kerry. In Approaching the Past: Historical Anthropology Through Belgium: Musee Royale de I' Afrique Centrale.
Irish Case Studies. Marilyn Silverman and P. H. Gulliver, eds. Pp. 205-235. New York: Cohn, Bernard. 1962. An Anthropologist among the Historians: A Field Study. 111e South
Columbia University Press. Atlantic Quarterly 61:13~29.
Birdwell-Pheasant, Donna. 1993. Irish Households in the Early Twentieth Century: Culture, Cohn, Bernard. 1980. History and Anthropology: The State of Play. ComparativeStlldies in
Class and Historical Contingency. Journal of Family History 18:19-38. Society and History 22: 198-221.
B1ackman. Margaret. 1982. During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, A Haida Cohn, Bernard. 1981. Anthropology and History in the 19805: Toward a Rapprochement.
Woman. Scattle: University of Washington Press. Journal of Interdisciplinary History /2:227-252.
Bloch, Marc. 1966 (orig. pub. 1931 as Caracteres originaux de I 'histoire rllrale pant;aise). Cohn, Bernard. 1987. An Anthropologist Among the IIistorians and Other Essays. Delhi:
French Rural History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Oxford University Press.
I31uch, Marc. 1984 (orig. pub. 1954). 711e lIistorian's Craft. Manchester, England: Man- Cohn Bernard. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: the British in India.
chester University Press. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Blok, I\lIton. 1992. Reflections on Making History. In Other Histories. Kirsten Hastrup, cd. Cole, John W., and Eric R. Wolf. 1974. 711e IIidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an
Pp. 121-127. London: ROllllcdge. Alpine Valley. New York: Academic Press.
Bohannan, Laura. 1952. A Genealogical Charter. Africa 22:301-315." Collier, George H. 1987. Socialists ofRural Andalusia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Borofsky. Robert. 1997. Cook, Lono. Obeyesekere, and Sahlins. Current Anthropology 38: Comaroff, Jean. 1985. Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Cultllre and History ofa
255-281. South African People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brettell, Caroline B. 1986. Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Population and History in Comaroff John and Jean Comaroff. 1992. Ethnography and the Historical/magination.
a Portuguese Parish. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boulder: Westview Press.
Brettell, Caroline B. 1991. Kinship and Contract: Property Transmission and Family Relations Cordell, Dcnnis D., loel W. Gregory, and Victor Piche. 1996. Hoe and f~age: A Social
in Northwestern Portugal. Comparative Studies in Society and History 33:443-465. History oJ a Circular Aligration System in West Africa. Boulder: Weslvlew Press.
Brettell, Caroline B. 1992. Archives and Informants: Reflections on Juxtaposing the Methods Crapanzano. Vincent. 1980. Tuhami: Portrait of a MorOCCO/I. Chicago: University of
of Anthropology aod History. Historical Methods 25:28-36. Chicago Press.
Brettell, Caroline B. 1995. We Have Already Cried Many Tears: The Stories ofThree 1}}.rt,!J7 Crapanzano, Vincent. 1984. Life Histories. American Anthropologist 86:953-959.
gllese Migrant Women. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. ~ ....
Cruikshank, Julie. 1992. Images of Klondike Gold Rush Narratives: Skookum Jim and the
Burke, Peter. 1992. History and Social Theory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Discovery of Gold. Ethno!tistory 39:20-41.
Byoum, Caroline Walker. 1984. Women's Stories, Women's Symbols: A Critique of Victor Darnton, Robert. 1984. The Great Cat A{assacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural
Turner's Theory of Liminality. In Anthropology and the Study of Religion. Frank History. New York: Basic Books.
Reynolds and Robert Moore, eds. Pp. 105-125. Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study
Oavis, Deborah, and Stevan Harrell, eds. 1993. Chinese Families in tlte Post-Mao Era.
of Religion.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
 Fieldwork in the Archives 539
538 URETrELL

Davis, John. 1973. Land and Family in Pis/ieci. London: Athlone Press. :: Susan Tax. 1981. From Present to Past: The Genealogical Approach to Local
Davis, Natalie Z. 1975. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford'~:
"P¥j\free:s~:~. Unpublished paper, delivered at the meetings of the Society for Spanish and
University Press. '1 portuguese Historical Studies, Toronto.
Jonathan. 1997. Review of How Natives Think: About Captain Cook For Example
Davis, Nalalie Z. 1981. Anthropology and History in the 1980s: The Possibilities ofthe Past~
!5t1.'ri'bdmMana'rshall Sahlins. American Ethnologist 24:261-262.
Journal DJ Interdisciplinary History 12:267-275. 'J,'
DeMaillie, Raymond J. 1993. 'These Have No Ears'; Narrative and the Ethnohistorical~
fric:ri Ch , Paul. \977. Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village. Chicago: University of Chicago
Method. Ethnohistory -10:515-538. ,:;: Press.
Dening, Greg. 1991. A Poetic for Histories: Transformations that Present the Past. In CIio':;~; Ori"drich, Paul. 1986. The Princes of Naranja. Austin: University of Texas Press.
in Oceania. Aktta Biersack, ed. Pp. 347-380. Washington, DC: Smithsonian lnstitution':~; k an
Jonas, and Orvar Lofgren. 1987. Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of
Frym, u"p
Press. ";>.l Middle~Class Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers OIverslty ress.
Dirks, Nicholas B. 1987. The Hollow Crown: EtJmohistory of an Indian Kingdom. ir Gailey, Christille Ward. 1987. Kinship to K~ngship: Gender Hierarchy and Slate Formation
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . in the Tongan Islands. Austin: UniverSity of Texas Press.
Dirks, Nicholas B. 1996. Is Vice Versa? Historical Anthropologies and Anthropological (;: Gait, Anthony. 1986. Social Class in a Mid-Eighteenth Century Apulian Town: Indications
Histories. In The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences. Terrence J. McDonald, ed. Pp. from the Catasto Onciario. Ethnohistory 33:419-447.
17-52. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gait. Anthony H. 1991. Far from the Church Bells: Settlement and Society in an Apulian
Douglass, William A. 1984. Emigration in aSouthltalian Town: An Anthropological History. Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Gewertz, Deborah. 1983. SepikRiver Societies: A. Historical Ethnography ofthe Chambri and
Dunaway, David K., and Will K. Baum. 1996. Oral History: An InterdiscipJinaryAnthology, Their Neighbors. New Haven: Yale University Press.
2d cd. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. \~ Gcwertz, Dcborah, and Edward SehielTclin, eds. 1985. I1islory and EtJulOhistory ill Pap/w
Dyke, lknnett, and Wilrrell T. Morrill, eds. 19&0. Genealogical f)emography. New York: ,~, New Guinea. Sydney: University or Sydney, Oeeania Monographs 112lt
Acadcmic Press. Gmelch, Shamn. 1991. Nan: The Life (If an Irish Travelling IVomml. Prospect Heights, I L:
Eldcr, Gkn 11., Jr. 1975. Agc Diftcrentiation and the Lire Course. Annual Review of'· Waveland Press.
Sociology I: 165-190. Goody, Jack. 1983. rhe [)evelofllll{,lIll~ltJ/I' F/lmily /11/(/ Marriage ill I-.'III·O/h'. CamhridJ},c:
Elder, Gkn 11., Jr. 1977. Family History and the Life Course. Journal oJ Family History ,_, Cambridge Universily Press.
~D~~ . Jack. 1993. The Culture of Flowers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elder, Glen H., Jr. 1987. Families and Lives: Some Developments in Life·Course Studies. Goody, Jack, Joan Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson, eds. 1976. Family and Inheritance.
Journal of Family History 12:179-199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1962. Social Anthropology: Past and Present-The GOllschalk, Louis, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Roberl Angel!. 1947. The Use of Personal
Marelt Lecture. In Essays ill Social Anthropology. Pp. 139-154. London: Documents in llistory, Anthropology, and Sociology. New York: Social Science Research
and Faber. Council.
Fernandez, Jamcs. 1990. Enclosure: Boundary Maintenance and Its Representations over Graff, Harvey J. 1994. Using First~Person Sources in Social and Cultural History: A Working
Time in Asturian Mountain Villages (Spain). In Culture Through Time: Anthropological Bibliography. Historical Afethods 27:87-93
Approaches. Emkio Ohnuki-Ticrney, ed. Pp. 94-127. Stanford: Stanford University
GTtle. Ronald K., ed. 1975. Envelopes of Sound. Chicago: Precedenl Publishing.
Press.
Grossbart, Stephen R. 1992. Quantitative and Social Science Methods for Historians:
Fogelson, Raymond. 1989. The Ethnohistory of Events and Non-Events. Ethnohistory I"
An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Books and Articles. Historical Methods 25:
36:133-147.,
10D-120.
Fox, Richard G. 1985. Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making. Berkeley: University of
",..GuUiver, P. H. 1989. Doing Anthropological Research in Rural Ireland: Methods and Sources
California Press. -~? for Linking the Past and the Present. In Irelandfrom Below: Social Change and Local
Freeman, Susan Tax. 1979. The Pasiegos: Spaniards in No Man's Land. Chicago: University;:, Communities. Chris Curtin and Thomas M. Wilson, eds. Pp. 320-338. Galway, Ireland:
of Chicago Press. Galway University Press.
 540 BRElTELL Fieldwork in the Archives 541

Gullivcr, P. Ir., and Marilyn Silvcrman. 1995. Merchants and Shopkeepers: A !fist
Kendall, Laurel 1988 nle Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman. G/Tales and the
Anthropology of an Irish Market Town, 1200-199/. Toronto: University of To
Press. Tellmg of Tales. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press
,,~'Kertzer, David I. 1984. Family Life in ~entralltaly, 1880~~910: Sharecropping, Wage
I-Iammcl, Eugene A., and Peter Laslett. 1974. Comparing Household Structure over Tim~~~',
i~:' Lobar, and Coresidence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Between Cultures. Comparative Studies in Society and His/ory 16:73-109. ,;
;:r,:Kcrtzer, David 1., and Dennis P.l-logan. 1989. Family. Political Economy, and De"!ograplu:c
Hanl~y. Susan 8., and Arthur P. Wolf, eds. 1985. Family and Population in East A;' " Change: The Transformation of Life in Casalecchio, Italy 186/-/92/. Madison: Um-
HIStory. Stanford: Stanford University Press. .
, ';j. versity of Wisconsin Press.
Hansen, Karen Tranbcrg. 1989. Distant Companions: Servants and Employers in Zam"i
/900-1985. lthaca: Camell University Press.
.g Kertzer, David I., and Andtea Schiaffino. 1983. Industrialization and Coresidence: A Life
)~;, Course Approach. In Life Span Development and Behavior. Paul B. Baltes and Orville G.
Hareven, Tama~a K. 1978. Cycles, Courses and Cohorts: Reflections on Theoretical"' '.~~;' Brim, Jr., eds. Pp. 359-391. New York: Academic Press.
MethodologIcal Approaches to the Historical Study of the Family. Journal of S '"
History 2:97~I09. Of } Kertzer, David L, Sydel Silverrnan, Darrelt B. Rutman, and Andrejs Plakans. 1986. History
,): and Anthropology: A Dialogue. Historical Methods /9:119-128.
I-Iareven. Tamara K. 1982. Family Time and Industrial Time. Cambridge: Cambri~
{Iniversily Press. '~}Kirch. Patrick V., and Marshall Sahlins. 1992. Anahulll: The Anthropology ofHistory in the
;,' Kingdom of Ill/waii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ilarrdl. Stevan, ed. 1995. ('hinese llistorical /IIicrodemography.
California Press. Knoclcl, John. 1?RR. Demographic llehavior in the Past: A StlIdyofFourteen German Village
PO{J/llatiofl.f in the DRhtcellfh and Ninetecnth Centuries. Cambriligc: Cambridge Univer-
IlasM'kil"I~'I~ ,nrclI, ,Illd Kirk .le/hey. 1990. [lndl'rsf(/lIding QIIlUltitativt' /listm:F. Call1brid' sity Press.
ress. ',. '
Krech. Shepard, Ill. 1991. The Statc of Ethnohislory. Annual Review of Anthropology
Hawkllls, Jack. 1984. Inverse Images The Meanmg o/Culture, Ethmclty and Family m P 20:345-375.
Colomal Guatemala Albuquerque. Ulllversity of New Mexico Press.
Kroeber, Alfred L., and Jane Richardson. 1940. Three Centuries of Women 's Dress Fashions.
.' Henige, David. 1982. Oral Historiography. New Yark: Longmans.'~ Anthropological Records 5: 111-153.
Henry,.Louis. 1956. ~ncie~n~sfami/les genevoises: Etude demographiqlle, XVle~xre sier Langness, L. L. 1965. The Life History in Anthropological Science. New York: Holt. Rinehart
Pans: Presses UnlVerSltalres de France. and Winston.
Henry, Louis. 1967. Manuel de demographie historique. Paris: Librarie Droz Langness, L. L., and Gelya Frank. 1981. Lives: An Anthropological Approach to Biography.
Hill, Jonathan D., ed. 1988. Rethinking History Qnd Myth: IndiRenolls South An~erican P~"'- Novato. CA: Chandler & Sharp.
spectives on the Past. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ,~.~ leVine, Sara. 1979. MOlhersand Wives: Gusii Women a/East A/rica. Chicago: University
Hoehler-Fatton, Cynthia. 1996.' Women ofFire andSpirit: History, Faith andGenderinR~:' of Chicago Press.
Religion in Western Kenya. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ..~~' Lewis, I. M. 1962. Historical Aspects of Genealogies in Northern Somali Social Structure.
Hoopes, James. 1979. Oral History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.:% Journal of African History 3:35-48.
Horwitz. Richard P. 1978. Anthropology Toward Histmy: Cullure and Work in a /9/ Lewis, I. M. 1968. History and Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock Publications.
Century Maine Town. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. .I' Lewis, Oscar. 1959. Five Families. New York: Basic Books.
Howell, Nancy. 1979. The Demography ofthe Dobe (Kung. New York: Academic pro' Lewis, Oscar. 1961. The Children 0/ Sanchez. New York: Random I-louse.
Isaac, Rhys. 1982. 77le Transformation 0/ Virginia, 1740-.1790. Chapel Hill' Universj~;' Linde, Charlotte. 1993. Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York: Oxford
North Carolina Press. . . University Press.
Jaraush, Konrad, and Kenneth Hardy. 1991. Quantitative Methods/or Historians: A G;K Linnekin, Iocelyn. 1991. Inside, Outside: A Hawaiian Community in the World System. In
to Research, Data, and Statistics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press<· Clio in Oceania. Aletta Biersack, ed. Pp. 165-203. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institu-
Kahn, Ioel S. 1993. Constituting the Minangkabau: Peasants, Culture. and Modernity'" tion Press.
Colonial Indonesia. Providence: Berg Publishers. :t; Maddox, Richard. 1993. El Castillo: The Politics of Tradition in an Andalusian Town.
Kellogg, Susan.
.
1991. Histories for Anthropology: Ten Years of Historical Research cui'
:
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Writing by Anthr0ro!ngists. ! q~n-·199n . .\or-;o/ Srir"Irr' {{istNI' /1"'!117 ..."""
 Fieldwork ill the Archives
5~2 BREI "fElL

989 H' h Religion: A Cultural and political History ofSherpa Buddhism.

Maitland, Frederick W. 1899 [1975]. The Body Politic. In Selected Essays. Frederick W. Ortner , Sherry. 1 . Ig. . .
MaitJand, ed. Pp. 285~303. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ' . ceton' Princeton Umvers1ty Press. . .
Prln· h C H Il nd 1993. The Narrated Self: Life Stones 10 Process.
Manu, Kristin, and Richard Roberts. 1991. Law in Colonial Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Peacock, James L., and Darot y . 0 a .
Heinemann. Ethos 21(4):367-383. if
. d G t I H Pelto. 1978. Anthropological Research: The Structure 0
Mason, Karen Oppenheim, WiIliam M. Mason, H. H. Winsborough, and W. Kenneth PaoIe.." Pelto, Perttl 1., an re e . .' .
1973. Some Methodological Issues in the Cohort Analysis of Archival Data. American t. lIir Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . .
Sociological Review 38:242-258. Inq y. 'd D 1994 Visual Historical Methods: Problems, Prospects, Applications.
Perlmutter, Dav} . .
Maynes, Mary 10. 1992. Autobiography and Class Formation in Nineteenth~Century Europe:; Historical Methods 27:167-184. I t F mily
Some Methodological Considerations. Social Science History /6:517-537. "1 . Id S 1985 The House that Giacomo Built: IIistory of an ta lan a .
PitklO, Dona . . ' .._
McDonogh, Gary Wray. 1986. Good Families of Barcelona: A Social fIistory of Power in;' 898-1978. Cambridge: Cambridge Umverslty Press. ..
/ I nd Sociology New York.
the Industrial Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . D ·d C 1972 Using Historical Sources in Ant I IrOPO ogy a .
Pltt, a V I . . .
Medick, Hans. 1987. 'Missionaries in the Row Boat'? Ethnological Ways of Knowing as a ': Halt, Rinehart and WlOston. . f
t Chicago: University 0
Challenge to Social History. Comparative Studies in Society and fIistory 29:76--98. la N 1986 Oglala Women: Myth, Ritua.I an d Rea I J y.
powers, M ar . .
Meister, Cary W. 1980. Methods for Evaluating the Accuracy of Ethnohistorical Chicago Press. d' Micronesian Atoll.
Demographic Data on North American Indians: A Brief Assessment. Ethnohistory 27:i; . 1994 The Ngatik Massacre: History and I entity on a
Poyer, L 1 0 . · . .
153-168. ' W h' ton DC Smithsonian InstitutIOn Press.
as 109 • ' . . I V·· ,I" n Afro-American People.
Meskill, Johanna M. 1970. The Chinese Genealogy as a Research Source. In Family and . R·le h ar d . 1983 . First-Time: The H,storlca IsJOn OJ a
Price,
Kinship in Chinese Society. Maurice Freedman, ed. Pp. 139-161. Stanford: Stanford Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. .
University Press. . R· h rd 1990 Alabi's World. Baltimore: The Johns HopklOs Pre.ss.
Price, IC a. . 1 II' and St~nl
Mintz, Jerome R. 1982. The Anarchists of Casas Viejas. Chicago: University of Chicago . I 1992 When the Shoe Fits: Census Data, Ora Istory,
Pres::>. Rogers, Susan Ca r o . · . -. 27
Families in Southwest France. HistOrical Methods 2).20-- . .
Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place o/Sugar in Modern History. New ( 883 197.J A Study in Society and Jllstory.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1980. flongot ffeadJlIlnting. J - :
York: Viking Penguin.
Stalll'llrd: SLunford Univl:rsiLy Press.
Moore, lohn 11.. and (ircgory CampbdL 1989. An Ethnohisloricall'erspcctivc on Chcyenne ·II· 1983 Corl"ee and Capitalism in the Venezuelan Andes. Austin: Uni-
Demography. Journal o/Family ffi!>·tory 14:17--42. Roseberry. W I Jam. . 'JJ' •
versity of T~xas Press.
Netting, Robert McCormick. 1981. Balancing on an Alp: Ecological Change and Continuity 'nlhropo[ogies and Jlistories. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutg~rs
Roseberry, William. 1989. .'1
in a Swiss Mountain Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
University Press. . F h
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1967. Land Tenure in Village Ceylon: A Sociological and Historical . t G 1988 A Negotiated World: Three Centuries afChange III a renc
Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosen b erg, 1I- a r n c . · . P ,
Alpine Community. Toronto: UniverSity of Toronto ress. .
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1992. The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in dL The Cultural Politics
Rosenwald George C, and Richard 1.. Ochberg. 1992: Storie Ives:
the Pacific. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ,
of Self Understanding. New Haven: Ya Ie U· mversl IY Press .
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1987. The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformation in 93 Concessions of a Microsimulator: Problems in Modeling the
Japanese History and Ritual. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rugg Ies, SI even. 19 . 169
Demography of Kinship. Historical Methods 26:161- . .
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1990a. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. 5 The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change. AmerIcan
Ryder, N orm. an 196 .
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Sociological Review 30:843-861. '1 R . I
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. I990b. The Monkey as Selfin Japanese Culture. In Culture Through . nd Geographical Mobility: A Faml y tgls er
Time: Amhropological Approaches. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, cd. Pp. 128-153. Stanford: Sabean, David. 1970. HoUseh?ld Formation a00 A I s de Demographie Historique, pp.
Study for Wurttemberg VJllage, 1760-19 . nna e
Stanford University Press.
75-294. . th E rly
Ortner, Sherry. 1984. Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties. Comparative Studies in .' h and M thical Realities: Structure In e a
Society and History 26: 126-166. Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Me.tap ors ; b . U iversity of Michigan Press.
History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann r or. n
 Fieldwork in the Archives 545
544 BREITELL

Verena. 1988. Coffee Pll1nters, Workers and Wives: Class C01if!icl and Gender
Sahlins, Marshall. 1983. Other Times, Other Customs: The Anthropology of Hist Stol cke, . S' P I Plantations 1850-1980. New York: S1. MarllOs Press.
American Anthropologist 85:517-544. 't RelatIOns on ao au 0 ' d
av e and Re roductive Labor in Mombasa. In Women an
Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strobe', M~rgare~. 19 83.. SIC R~bertson :nd Martin A. Klein, eds. Pp. 111-129. Madison:
Slavery m Africa. C1alre .
Sahlins, Marshal!. 1991. The Return of the Event, Again: With Reflections on the Beginnin
University of Wisconsin Press. .
of the Great Fijian War of 1843 to 1855 Between the Kingdoms of Bau and Rewa,' W.l!" C 1968 Anthropology, History and Ethnohistory. In IntroductIOn to
C/io in Oceania. Aletta Biersack, ed. Pp. 37-99. Washington, DC: Smithsonian lnstituti swrtevant, I lam. Es' • th Scope and Methods o/the Science of Man. lames
Press. Cultural Anthropology: says m e . , .
Sahlins, Marshal!. 1995. How Natives Think: About Captain Cook For Example. Chicag~
CI l'fton , ed . Pp. 451-475. Boston: Houghton Mlfflm. ,. K·
.
D aWlOgs as
M 1994 Shields and Lodges, Warriors and Chiefs·. IOwa r
University of Chicago Press. Szabo, Joyce. . . .
Historical Records. Ethnohlstory 41.1-24.
Schapera, I. 1962. Should Anthropologists Be Historians? Journal of tile Royal Ant 983 Dutchmen on the Bay: The Ethnohistory 0/ a Contractual Com-
pological Institute 92: t 43-156. Taylor, Lawrence. 1 . .
munity. Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaOla Press. .
Schneider, Jane C., and PeterT. Schneider. 1976. Culture and Political Economy in Weste" 1985 The Priest and the Agent: Social Drama and Class ConsclOusnness
Sicily. New York: Academic Press. Taylor, Lawrence, , ", d H' t ry 27'696-712,
in the West of Ireland. Comparative Studies m Society an IS 0 .. . .
Schneider, lane c., and Peter T. Schneider. 1996. Festival o/the Poor: Fertility Decline 1992 The Languages of Belief: Nineteenth-Century ReligiOUS Dlscou~se
the Ideology o/Class ill Sicily, 1860-1980. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Taylor, Lawrence.. h. the Past· Historical Anthropology Through Irish
in Southwest Donegal. In Approac mg .. d P 142-175 New York:
Sheridan, Mary, and lane Salaff, eds. 1987. Chinese Working Women. Bloomington: Indi Case Studies. Marilyn Silverman and P. H. Gulliver, e s. p. .
University Press.
Columbia University Press.
Shoemaker, Nancy. 1992. The Census as Civilizer. Historical Methods 25:4-11. Thompson, Paul. 1988. The Voice 0/ the Past: Oral History, 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford
Shostak,Marjorie. 1981. Nisa: The Life and Words 0/ a !Kung Woman. Cambridge: Harv,. University Press. .
University Press. Tilly Charles. 1981. As Sociology Meets History. New York: Academic Press. .
Sider, Gera1d M. 1986. Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: A New/oundla,,, • , S . I C t uction 0/ Oral History.
Tonkin, Elizabeth. 1992. Narrating Our Pasts: T, le ocra ons r
!llustration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , . . . .
Silverblatt, Irene. 1987. Moon, Sun. and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca a , , H 1990 Out of Silence: Writing Interactive Women s Life HistOries 10
Townsen, d L es Ile. .
Colonial Peru. Prince ton: Princeton University Press. Africa. History in Africa 17:351~358.
Silverman, Marilyn, and P. H. Gulliver. 1992. Approaching the Past: HistoricalAnthropolo , , N Y rk' Harcourt , Brace and
T revor· Roper, H.H . 1965 . The Rise o/ChrlstIan Europe. ew 0 .
Through Irish Case Studies. New York: Columbia University Press.
World. . I t 1660
Silvermun, SydcI. 1979. On the Uses of History in Anthropology: The Palio of Sien ' B 1976 )",e Children orAaataentsic: A Historyo/the [furon Peop e o ·
T ngger. ruce. . , . ~.
American Ethno[ogist 6:413--436. Montreal: McGilI~Queen s Umverslty Press. .
Silverman, Sydel. 1986. Anthropology and History: Understanding the Boundaries. Historica' Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism and Continuity in an A/rican Society. Manchester, England.
Methods [9:123-126. cl Manchester University PreSS.
Skinner, G. William. 1957. Chinese Society in 77wiland: An Ana[ytical History. IthaclU. , I \) In Dramas, Fields and Metaphors.
Turner Victor. 1974. Hidalgo: History as SOCIa rama.
Comell University Press. Pp. '98-155. Ithaca: Camel! University Press. .
Skocpol, Theda. 1984. Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology:. , T In I Handbook of J\4etllOd 111 Cultural
Vansina, Jan. 1970. Culture Through Ime. : P 165-179 New York: The Natural
In Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Theda Skocpol, ed. Pp. 35~3.,~r Anthropology. Raoul Naroll and Ronald Cohen, e s. p. .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
History Press. .
Steckel, Richard H. 1994. Census Manuscript Schedules Matched with Property Tax Lists History. Madison: University of WisconSin
Vansina, lan. 1985. Oral Tradition as
A Source ofInformation on Long-Term Trends in Wealth Inequality. Historical Meth ,"
27:71-85, Press. .. F a h May
Vincent loan 1992 A political Orchestration of the Irish Famme: Co~nj. ;r~an ~/ dies
Stockard, lanice E. 1989. Daughters o/the Canton Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economi,. 1847. In Appro~ching the Past: Historical Anthropology Throug J rES I ase u ·
Strategies in South China. 1860-1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
546 BRETTELL

Marilyn Silverman and P. H. Gulliver, eds. Pp. 75-98. New York: Columbia Universi
Press.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1972. Rockda/e: The Growth of an American Village in the Ear.
Industrial Revolution. New York: W. W. Narton.
Wallace, Anthony F. C. 1981. St. Clair: A Nineteenth-Century Coal Town's Experience wit
a Disaster-Prone Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. '
Watson, Lawrence C.• and Maria Barbara Watson-Franke. 1985. Interpreting Life Historie~
An Anthropological Inquiry. New Brunswick, NI: Rutgers University Press. '"
Weiner, Annette B., and Jane Schneider. 1989. Cloth and Human Experience. Washingto'
DC: Smithsonian Press.
Wells, Robcrt V. 1978. On till: Dangers or Constructing Artificial Cohorts in Times of Rapid. PART III
Social Change. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 9: 103-110.
West, Barbara A. 1992. Women's Diaries as Ethnographic Resources. Journal ofNarrati t. INTERPRETING INFORMAnON
and Life History 2:333-354. "
White, Luise. 1995. "They Could Make Their Victims Dull": Genders and Genres, Fantasie
and Cures in Colonial Southern Uganda. American Historical Review /00:1379-1402
Willigan, 1. Dennis, and Katherine Lynch. 1982. Sources and Methods of Historica
Demography. New York: Academic Press. .4

Winchester,lan. 1992. What Every Historian Needs to Know About Record Linkage forth~.
Microcomputer Era. Historical Methods 25:149-179.
,
Wolf, Arthur P., and Chieh-shan Huang 1980. Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-/945
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wolf, Eric R. 1957. Closed Corporate Peasant Communities in Mesoamerica and Central
Java. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology /3: 1-13.
Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of-
California Press.
Wright, Marcia. 1993. Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East/Centra/'
Africa. New York: Lillian Barber Press. 'J
Yans McLaughlin, Virginia. 1990. Metaphors ofSelf in History: Subjectivity, Oral Narrative;;':
I
and Immigration Studies. In Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology. and Politics.;
Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, ed. Pp. 254~290. New York: Oxford University Press.