Metahistory

I just discovered a great new resource for anyone interested in the process of “doing history.” William Cronon, environmental historian and Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with several of his students, has created a new site called “Learning Historical Research” that is useful for everyone from undergraduates working on their first real research papers to seasoned graduate students plugging away at their dissertations.

Fully titled “Learning to Do Historical Research: A Primer for Environmental Historians and Others,” the website is a well-thought out, well-documented, and, importantly, well-designed introduction to matters both methodological (e.g., what questions should you ask of sources?) and practical (e.g., how to take notes). Much of the research advice is summarized from the great book The Craft of Research, but Cronon and his students take the principles from Craft and present concrete examples of how historians in particular can utilize them. While it’s definitely got an environmental history bent to it, with many of the examples being drawn from works that Cronon assigned in his Topics in American Environmental History course (the site was created as a group assignment for the course), it’s useful for historians of any stripe, with explanations about how to use all kinds of sources, from “reading a landscape” to using quantitative evidence. It’s also got a helpful section on the craft of historical writing, and if you’ve ever read Cronon’s work, you’ll know that any writing tips from him (either directly or through his students) are probably going to be gold. Overall, the site is remarkably comprehensive and a nice example of how one can present good, educational content on the internet.

Those interested in digital humanities, particularly those concerned with how to present historical information online, should really spend some time reading the “How We Built This Website” section of the site. It’s a great, fairly long essay (~4500 words) detailing the conception of the project and the challenges that Cronon and his students faced while building the site. Some of the more interesting bits include short discussions on the challenges of navigating copyright concerns when wanting to implement illustrations and images, and the basic, but important, challenges of designing, hosting, and maintaining such a website. This transparent explanation of the site’s origins is in many ways as useful as the website itself, albeit for different audiences.

Unfortunately, the site lacks a good discussion about taking notes on the computer. There is a section about note-taking software, but it’s pretty bare, and not really that helpful. It’d be great to see some discussion about Zotero, especially since the only options that are discussed are the expensive, closed-source, and, frankly, outdated reference managers RefWorks and EndNote. Zotero also deserves a mention in that section because it’s definitely geared towards being both a reference/bibliography manager and a full-fledged note-taking tool, whereas RefWorks and EndNote are much more focused on the bibliography side of things. I also think it would be worth having some discussion of unique tools like DEVONthink¹ and Tinderbox (those two are Mac-only, but I’m sure there are unique, useful Windows and Linux applications worth mentioning as well). I imagine this section will get filled out a bit if Cronon & Co. decide to keep the guide updated—and I really do hope updates are in the pipe.

(It’s worth noting that Patrick Rael at Bowdoin College has maintained a similar site, “Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students,” for years. Cronon’s site complements Rael’s nicely and those interested in writing and researching history would do well to spend some time on both sites.)

1. Essayist Steven Berlin Johnson has a great article in the Times Book Review about how he uses DEVONthink to do research for his books. He’s also got a blog post with some more technical details. [↩]

I recently had a chance to read James Deetz’s In Small Things Forgotten, a book which had somehow escaped my attention, despite my interest in both early America and the use of non-textual sources. The cover proclaims that it’s an “American Classic”—embarrassingly, I hadn’t even heard of it. I’m glad I came across it though, because it really is one of the best history books I’ve ever read.

Deetz does two things well. First, his overarching argument concerns the cultural shift which took place from the 17th century to the 18th. In particular, he argues that throughout the 18th century there was an increasing secularization of religion and a trend away from corporate identity towards one that emphasized the individual over the group. It’s a trend noted and accepted by many scholars before Deetz, but what sets him apart is his approach. He uses material artifacts in conjunction with written documents to help plug any holes that using documents alone might have left in our understanding. For instance, written sources from this period say very little about foodways and in particular tableware. However, a study of the contents of colonial trash pits shows us  that as the 18th century progressed there was a marked uptick in the amount of plates used, suggesting a trend away from the communal “trenchers” and towards individual servings. Deetz sees this as an important piece of evidence in confirming claims of individualism triumphing over corporate identity, and it’s all quite interesting and convincing.

While he touches on numerous types of evidence (like the tableware), he spends the most time tracing changes in pottery design and use, grave markers, and houses. He also includes an important section on African-American historical archaeology and its contributions (both realized and potential) to historical understanding. If you’re interested reading a bit more about these main threads of the book, it’s worth taking a look at this mini-review by Caitlin from Vast Public Indifference. I’d like to put that aside, though, and talk about the second thing that Deetz achieves with his book.

What I liked most about the book is how transparent it is. At times the book felt like a how-to guide for not just historical archaeology, but historical thinking in general. (Another book that does this well is Laurel Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale, in which you get a sense of exactly how Ulrich approached, analyzed, and understood the sparse sources she used.) So, while Deetz is busy making claims about cultural change in early America, he is also making claims about the challenges of historical analysis and the limits of various types of sources and approaches. Here is one of my favorite passages, in which Deetz challenges the tendency of prehistoric archaeologists to attempt to understand cultural change as something “rational,” guided by “common sense”:

What historical archaeology teaches us is that common sense is culturally relative, that in the past people have done things and behaved in ways that to us might seem almost irrational but that to them may not have been, and that the phenomenon of cultural change is far more complex and imponderable than we might suspect were we to rely only on the detailing of it by prehistorians. (34)

The notion that common sense is culturally relative is something missed not just by prehistoric archaeologists, but the population at large. Deetz’s argument here is one that should shouted by history professors in front of their undergrad classes, because it leads to critical historical questions like, “Then what’s the cultural context here?” and “What made people think their actions were good ideas?” and “How much control did these people have over what they did?” etc. Attempts to answer these questions will almost certainly yield more interesting insights into American history than simply assuming historical actors acted rationally. By making apparent his own approach to sources and historical actions throughout the book, Deetz succeeds in making the book useful for anyone looking to understand historical thinking and research, not just early Americanists or those interested in material culture. It’s this aspect which impressed me the most, and I’m looking forward to using this book in the future to help undergraduates understand what it means to do history.