The Role of Imagination in Narrative History

History and archaeology cover the same beat, but in very different ways. The material remains of past human activity become data when the archaeologist recognizes their significance as evidence from the past and collects and records them. Artifacts are discrete entities whose characteristics of form result wholly or partially from human activity. 1 The archaeologist resembles the sociologist in looking for broad categories from which to issue broad generalizations. Historic archaeology has developed rather recently in the United States as a sub-set within the established discipline of professional archaeologists. In our country much of our historic archaeology has been devoted to answering questions of ethnicity. Americans have been interested, and for good reason, in exploring ethnic differences in the recovered artifacts. Ours is a country of immigrants and forced laborers, and part of the modern beliefs we share is that acceptance of ethnic differences is proper, both morally and practically. Historic archaeolog