Instructor:  Gerry Waite       
Office: BB311Phone: 765-285-3279  
e-mail Gwaite@bsu.edu 

  Stephen Jennings and Benjamin Waite  as depicted in "Young and Old Puritans of Hatfield"                               

Goals:
        To develop an understanding of ethnohistory as a methodology for the study of past cultural systems.
        To use historical comparison and an anlysis of historical events to reconstruct the lifeways and cultural change in affected peoples who may not have left their own                 written record.
        To develop a working sense of cooperation with different aspects of history, cultural anthropology, and archeology in order to create the broadest possible interpretation             of past cultural systems.
        To differentiate sources of documentation and develop a relativistic pattern of evaluation.  

Objectives: 
        The student will be able to identify and locate primary and secondary resources relating to a specific time and geography, and write a brief analysis of the authors'                     frame of reference and potential bias.
        The student will be able to identify specifics of change in perceptions of political correctness and apply those specifics to written interpretation.
        The student will interpret through written essay, cultural patterns and systems of people encountered by explorers, colonists, soldiers and settlers who have documented             their travels in written journals.
        The student will be able to write a proposal containing an outline and methodology for a specified ethnohistorical  research project.
        The student will research and finish in written form a proposed ethnohistoric research project.

Texts:

           
Course Outline:
Week one: Culture as a means of understanding the past and the present. Anthropological methodologies. Trigger handout

Week two:  The scope of ethnohistory. Documents, interpretation, and perceived reality. Handouts

Week three:   Reality Mediation. Worldview, ours theirs and others. Read "The Ecological transformation of New England" in "Changes in the Land" Pps 19-156  Jamestown 1-16

Week four:  Archaeology, oral traditions, ethnography, historical comparison and secondary resources.  Jamestown Pps 17-36 


Week five:  Interpretation of names and titles, personal and tribal. Jamestown and  Bradford, selected readings.

Week six:  Source analysis and historical accuracy. Bradford, selected readings and

Week seven:     A biographical scketch of William Bradford. Pps 3-19 of "Bradford's History"

Week eight:  Maps and geography. "Changes in the Land" Pps 128-170  "Voyage of the Mayflower and Exploration of the Coast" in Bradford. Pps 86-105and Map handouts.

Week nine: Quantatative analysis. Trade Handouts and selected reading Bradford and Jamestown.

 Week ten: Complimentary sources: Linguistic analysis: Processes and consequences of language change. Bradford, The Booke, Pps 106-165
Week eleven: Research Design. Library meetings.

Week twelve:  Paper discussions

Week thirteen:  The native in film                                                         

Week Fourteen:  Picturing history in popular culture.

Week fifteen: Papers Due.