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Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography

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John Jackson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020)
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199766567-0240

Ethnohistory and Historical Ethnography

Bronwen Douglas and Dario Di Rosa

Introduction
This article situates ethnohistory historically, conceptually, methodologically and geographically in
relation to its intertwined “parent” disciplines of Anthropology and History. As a named interdisciplinary
inquiry, ethnohistory emerged in the United States (US) in the mid-1950s in the “applied” context of
academic involvement in Native American land claims hearings after 1946. However, anthropology (the
science of humanity) has overlapped, intersected, or diverged from history (study or knowledge of the
past) since becoming a distinct field in Europe in the mid-18th century and gradually professionalized as
an academic discipline from the 1830s, initially in Russia. Anthropological approaches oscillated between
historicization and its neglect or denial, with recurring tension between event and system, process and
structure, diachrony and synchrony. In the late 18th and 19th centuries, ethnology (comparative study of
peoples or races, their origins and development) was distinguished from the natural history of man and
from anthropology (the science of race). From the 1860s to the 1920s, Anglophone anthropological
theory was dominated by the opposed doctrines of sociocultural evolution and diffusion – both
superficially historical but largely ahistorical processes. For the next half century, prevailing functionalist,
structuralist, and culturalist discourses mostly denied knowable history to ethnography’s purportedly
vanishing “primitive” subjects. This uneven, agonistic disciplinary history did not encourage a subfield
uniting anthropology and history. However, after 1950, in global contexts of anticolonial nationalism,
decolonization, and movements for Indigenous or egalitarian rights, anthropologists, historians, and
archaeologists developed the hybrid fields of *Ethnohistory* and *Ethnographic History*, which flourished
for half a century. Practitioners transcended ethnohistory’s spatial and conceptual roots in the *US and
Canada* to investigate Indigenous or Afro-American pasts in *Latin America and the Caribbean*,
Indigenous or local pasts in *Africa*, *Asia*, and *Oceania*, and non-Indigenous pasts in *Europe* and
elsewhere. The need to incorporate Indigenous or popular histories and viewpoints was increasingly
emphasized. From the 1980s, ethnohistory was condemned as Eurocentric, outdated, even racist, by
postcolonial and postmodern critiques. The label’s usage declined in the 21st century in favor of
anthropological history, historical anthropology, or emergent fields of *Anthropology of History*, historical
consciousness, and historicity.

General Overviews
Ethnohistory’s formal origins are traced to demands that US anthropologists present expert testimony
before the Indian Claims Commission after World War II. With publication of the journal **Ethnohistory**
in 1954, it became a named academic field combining ethnographic fieldwork with documentary, oral,
and archaeological perspectives on Native American pasts. Most overviews emphasize ongoing
dominance of the Americas in ethnohistory’s total content, especially in **Ethnohistory** as surveyed by
Reihm, Brambila, and Brown et al. 2019. The field’s fragmentation and lack of a theoretical core shows in
the absence of monograph-length overviews. Successive synopses of relevant literature and approaches
in papers by Sturtevant 1966, Cohn 1968, Carmack 1972, Trigger 1982, Krech 1991, and Harkin 2010
provide a cumulative summary, often with sceptical focus on problems and deficiencies. All articles cited
are available online by purchase or subscription.

Carmack, Robert M. 1972. “Ethnohistory: A Review of Its Development, Definitions, Methods, and Aims.”
In Annual Review of Anthropology 1: 227-246.

Positions ethnohistory within British and US genealogies of relations between anthropology and
history. Sceptical of ethnohistory’s theoretical weight and breadth to encompass anthropologists’
mixed recourse to history and limits it to a subfield of anthropology with eclectic methods for
diachronic study of past cultures using documents and oral traditions.

Cohn, Bernard S. 1968. “Ethnohistory.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences . Vol. 6.
Edited by David L. Sills, 440-448. [New York]: Macmillan and Free Press.

Fine assessment of history and anthropology’s mutual embrace by a historical anthropologist of

colonialism in India. Details ethnohistory’s precursors, origins, methods, and first two decades,
including parallel emergence and development beyond the US after World War II, in places with
and without long literary traditions.

Harkin, Michael E. 2010. “Ethnohistory’s Ethnohistory: Creating a Discipline from the Ground Up.” In
Social Science History 34.2: 113-128.

Surveys anthropology’s labile relationships with history; ethnohistory’s North American

emergence and development from the 1940s as an empirical field distinct from anthropological
history or historical anthropology; its subsequent broadening theoretical and geographical ambit;
and its growing sensitivity to Indigenous history and historicity.

Krech, Shepard, III. 1991. “The State of Ethnohistory.” In Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 345-375.

Detailed bibliography and critique by the editor of **Ethnohistory** (1983-1992) of ethnohistory’s

precursors, diverse manifestations, theoretical positions, and alleged state of “crisis.” Questions
ethnohistory’s legitimacy, given its “exclusionary,” “tribal” connotations, neglect of “indigenous
historiography,” and increasingly blurred boundaries between the parent disciplines.

Riehm, Grace E., Lydia Brambila, Brittany A. Brown, et al. 2019. “What is Ethnohistory?: A Sixty-Year
Retrospective.” In Ethnohistory 66.1: 145–162.

Surveys trends in 900 articles published over six decades in **Ethnohistory**, including growing
focus on Latin America from the mid-1980s; limited attention to places beyond the Americas; and
ongoing emphasis on historical documents and ethnographic data over archaeological, linguistic,
or oral materials.

Sturtevant, William. 1966. “Anthropology, History, and Ethnohistory.” In Ethnohistory 13.1-2: 1-51.

An anthropologist’s dated exposition of presumed conventional differences between

anthropology and history, their shared interests, and interplay as ethnohistory. Stresses the
reciprocal importance of ethnographic fieldwork and historical documentary critique.

Trigger, Bruce G. 1982. “Ethnohistory: Problems and Prospects.” In Ethnohistory 29.1: 1-19.
 A Canadian archaeologist’s review of ethnohistory in North America, noting increasingly vocal
Indigenous perspectives on their own pasts. Sees ethnohistory not as a separate discipline
limited to non-literate peoples, but as a methodology to study cultural change, demanding critical
integration of archaeological, ethnological, ethnographic, and historical materials.

Anthologies
Few anthologies are devoted to ethnohistory, but recent works recommend innovative approaches
resonant with the *Anthropology of History*: Whitehead 2003 wants ethnohistorians to practice the
ethnography of historical consciousness; Braun 2013 urges an ethnohistory based on listening; and
Carlson, et al. 2018 endorse active direction of ethnohistory projects by Indigenous participants.
Moreover, numerous relevant collections on intersections of anthropology and history have appeared
since the late 1980s, with broad geographical and temporal coverage in Schneider and Rapp 1995, Axel
2002, and Murphy, Cohen, and Bhimull et al. 2011; the history of ethnohistory in Austria in Wernhart
1987; and varied regional focus in Carrier 1992 (Oceania), Hastrup 1992 (Europe), and Merrill and
Goddard 2002 (Native Americans).

Axel, Brian Keith, ed. 2002. From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures . Durham and
London: Duke University Press.

Envisages a shared transdisciplinary epistemology, beyond mere disciplinary exchange bridging

archive and field (see Dirks 1996 under *Theory*). Case studies span different times and places,
setting local histories in relation to global processes, particularly colonialism. Braun, Sebastian
Felix, ed. 2013. Transforming Ethnohistories: Narrative, Meaning, and Community . Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press.

US-focused collection seeking to add theory to ethnohistorians’ methodological preoccupation

and complement their reliance on archives by listening to stories and myths embedded in cultural
contexts. Ebook available *online [https://www.oupress.com/books/14019272/transforming-
ethnohistories]* by purchase.

Carlson, Keith Thor, John Sutton Lutz, David M. Schaepe, and Naxaxalhts’i (Albert “Sonny” McHalsie),
ed. 2018. Towards a New Ethnohistory: Community-Engaged Scholarship among the People of the
River. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.

Describe a decolonized ethnohistory co-constructed by graduate students in a Canadian

Ethnohistory Field School in dialogue with Indigenous Stó:lō people, who hosted them, set their
agenda, and helped analyze results. Ebook available *online
[https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/towards-a-new-ethnohistory]* by purchase.

Carrier, James G., ed. 1992. History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology. Berkeley, Los Angeles,
and Oxford: University of California Press.

Essays by anthropologists and an ethnographic historian addressing problems in conventional

Melanesian ethnography: synchronic essentialism; reification of supposedly authentic,
unchanging primitive society; and ahistoric elision of local engagements with colonialism,
Christianity, modernity, and the state.
Hastrup, Kirsten, ed. 1992. Other Histories. London and New York: Routledge.

Essays by anthropologists of Europe contesting universalization of the “Western” epistemology of

linear history and celebrating the multiplicity of experiential histories within (and beyond) Europe.
*Merrill, William L. and Ives Goddard, ed. 2002. Anthropology, History, and American Indians:
Essays in Honor of William Curtis Sturtevant. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press
[https://repository.si.edu/handle/10088/1347]*.

Essays addressing the anthropology, history, and ethnohistory of Native Americans, with pointed
reference to political or ethical implications of such research. Includes a chapter by Krech
restating his earlier critique of ethnohistory (see 1991 under *General Overviews”).

Murphy, Edward, David William Cohen, Chandra D. Bhimull, et al., ed. 2011. Anthrohistory: Unsettling
Knowledge, Questioning Discipline. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Proposes a radical program for going beyond partial integration of anthropology and history to
achieve a truly transdisciplinary practice which tackles fundamental epistemological issues,
illustrated by varied approaches in different settings.

Schneider, Jane, and Rayna Rapp, ed. 1995. Articulating Hidden Histories: Exploring the Influence of
Eric R. Wolf. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Essays showing the breadth of Wolf’s theoretical legacy (see Wolf 2010 under *Theory*),
especially configuring the anthropology-history nexus in terms of political economy and the
dialectical formation of social and cultural identities under capitalism and state encompassment.

Wernhart, Karl R., ed. 1987. Ethnohistory in Vienna. Aachen: Edition Herodot.

Traces ethnohistory in Austria to a group formed in 1930 to study the remote culture history of
African peoples, renamed ethnohistory in 1962. Since 1980, researchers have combined
documentary inquiry with oral history and ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary African and
other societies.

Whitehead, Neil L., ed. 2003. Histories and Historicities in Amazonia. Lincoln and London: University of
Nebraska Press.
Anthology of ethnographies of historical consciousness in colonial, postcolonial, and globalized
settings in Amazonia, edited by the editor of Ethnohistory (1998-2007). Considers theoretical
issues; different media to present and preserve the past; landscape and mapping in history-
making; and Indigenous uses of historicity in cultural and political agendas.

Journals
Apart from **Ethnohistory** (from 1954), peer-reviewed Anglophone journals addressing dialogue of
anthropology and history include **Comparative Studies in Society and History** (from 1958), **Focaal –
Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology** (from 1985), and **History and Anthropology** (from
1984), and **Journal of Historical Sociology** (from 1988). **Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian
History and Society** (1982-2005) focuses on South Asia but has had worldwide impact in history,
anthropology, postcolonial studies, and their intersections. The German-language **Wiener
Ethnohistorische Blätter** (1970-2008) mobilized historical methods within ethnology. Relationships
between history and anthropology figure largely in France in **Annales** (from 1929) and **L’Homme**
(from 1961); and in Italy in **Quaderni Storici** (from 1966).

**Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annales-histoire-

sciences-sociales-english-edition]**

Influential mouthpiece for the Annales school of social historians (see Le Roy Ladurie 1977
under *Ethnographic History* and 1978 under *Europe*), who in the 1970s adopted ethnographic
methods inspired by symbolic anthropology to produce anthropological histories. Jointly
published in French and English by Les Editions de l’EHESS and Cambridge University Press.

**Comparative Studies in Society and History[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-

studies-in-society-and-history#]**

Encourages multidisciplinary empirical research and theorizing, including relations between

anthropology and history. Now published by Cambridge University Press

**Ethnohistory**[https://read.dukeupress.edu/ethnohistory]

Flagship of the American Society for Ethnohistory, initially devoted to applied research in
“documentary history of the culture and movements of primitive peoples,” mainly Native
Americans. Now considers “indigenous, diasporic, and minority peoples” absent from colonial
and national histories and anthropology, emphasizing the Americas generally.

**Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology**

[https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/focaal/focaal-overview.xml]

Positions itself within debates on conjunctions of anthropology and history, particularly

processual analysis and putting local settings within wider contexts of global empire and
capitalism. Originally published in Dutch and since 2004 in English.

**History and Anthropology**

[https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=ghan20]

Addresses interchanges between anthropologically-informed history, historically-informed

anthropology, and the history of ethnographic and anthropological representation, emphasizing
social change and colonial history.

**L’Homme: Revue française d’anthropologie**[https://journals.openedition.org/lhomme/]

The primary French anthropology journal which acknowledged interdisciplinary approaches from
the outset and published more historically-oriented articles after 1980. Published by Les Editions
de l’EHESS.

**Quaderni Storici**

Journal associated with Italian approaches to social history known as microstoria (microhistory),
emergent in varied epistemological dialogue with anthropology. See Ginzburg 2013 under
*Europe*, Levi 2001 under *Anthropology and History*, and Di Rosa 2018 under “Theory*.

**Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society**

 Influential radical journal published in 12 volumes by South Asian specialists led by Ranajit Guha
(see Guha 1999 under *Asia*). In general, owed more theoretically to Gramsci, Foucault,
postcolonialism, or feminism than anthropology, but commitment to “history from below” and
popular historical consciousness or agency meshes with historical anthropology, especially in the
first six volumes edited by Guha.

**Wiener Ethnohistorische Blätter**

Combined theoretical and methodological reflections on ethnohistory or culture history with

ethnohistorical studies of particular societies, particularly in Africa. Published annually for nearly
four decades from the University of Vienna. See Wernhart 1987 under *Anthologies*.

Theory
Ethnohistory has produced little systematic theory – but see Simmons 1988 – and is often accused of
over-commitment to atheoretical, data-driven narrative (see Krech 1991 under “General Overviews”).
Early ethnohistories were unreflectively positivist and ignored or downplayed Indigenous historicities –
but see Fogelson 1989. However, much of the post-1980 theoretical literature on intersections and
mutual appropriation of anthropology (stereotyped as synchronic and generalizing) and history
(stereotyped as linear and particularist) is relevant to ethnohistory. Wolf 2010 sets the anthropology of
non-European societies within global history and urges anthropologists to tackle histories of class
formation (see separate Oxford Bibliographies article *Eric R. Wolf[obo-9780199766567-0042]*). Ohnuki-
Tierney 1990 champions symbolic approaches to the mutual mediation of culture and history. Historian
Kellogg 1991 and anthropologists Kalb and Tak 2005 rebuke uncritical borrowing or neglect of concepts
and methods by the other discipline. Thomas 1996 and Dirks 1996 offer critiques of anthropology’s
engagements (or not) with history and prospectuses for a unitary field or common endeavor. Ortner 2006
identifies the “historic turn” as a key transformation in anthropological theory from the late 1970s,
alongside growing focus on practice and human agency over timeless systems and structures. Di Rosa
2018 relates history’s conjunction with anthropology to Italian microhistory (see Ginzburg 2013 under
*Europe* and Levi 2001 under *Anthropology and History*).

Dirks, Nicholas. 1996. “Is Vice Versa? Historical Anthropologies and Anthropological Histories.” In The
Historic Turn in the Human Sciences. Edited by Terrence J. McDonald, 17-51. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.

Attributes anthropological historians’ attraction to semiotic concepts of culture to their discomfort

with theory and inadequate treatment of the culture-history nexus by historical anthropologists.
Proposes to destabilize culture and history by historicizing them. Originally published 1990 as a
working paper available *online [http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/51210]*.

Di Rosa, Dario. 2018. “Microstoria, Pacific History, and the Question of Scale: Two or Three Things that
We Should Know About Them.” In Journal of Pacific History 53.1: 25-43.

Contends that Italian microhistory’s local focus on personal relationships and agency, rather than
reified categories, meshes with wider perspectives by concretizing the workings and limitations of
institutional power and elucidating processes of class formation often neglected by
anthropologists and historians. Available online by purchase or subscription.
Fogelson, Raymond D. 1989. “The Ethnohistory of Events and Nonevents.” Ethnohistory 36.2: 133-147.

Critique of the positivism, theory avoidance, and “naïve epistemology” of fellow US

ethnohistorians. Wants a more pluralist conception of events, with “ethno-ethnohistorical”
attention to “native theories of history”. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Kalb, Don, and Herman Tak, ed. 2005. Critical Junctions: Anthropology and History Beyond the Cultural
Turn. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Collection edited by Dutch anthropologists seeking to create a unitary field by building alternative
theoretical bridges, either anthropological history or historical anthropology. Rejects application
of cultural hermeneutics to the anthropology-history conjuncture, preferring attention to praxis,
class, and wider connections in time and space.

Kellogg, Susan. 1991. “Histories for Anthropology: Ten Years of Historical Research and Writing by
Anthropologists, 1980-1990.” In Social Science History 15.4: 417-455.

Global overview and bibliography of historical anthropologies published during a key decade by
ethnohistorians or cultural anthropologists, criticized for privileging their own discipline,
subsuming events and processes within socio-cultural structures, and ignoring historical
methodology. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, ed. 1990. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.

Theoretical survey and examples of symbolic anthropologists’ textualist approaches to

temporality and the transformative dialectic of cultural structure and history in the late 1980s. The
editor’s important call for attention to historicities – the “collective experience and understanding
of history” – is conflated with a reified semiotic notion of culture.

Ortner, Sherry B. 2006. “Updating Practice Theory.” In Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power,
and the Acting Subject, 1-18. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Relates the “historic turn” in anthropology in the early 1980s to rethinkings of practice, power,
and cultural dynamics – particularly by Sahlins (see Sahlins 1981 under *Oceania* and 1985
under “Anthropology of History*) – triggered by global social and political conflicts after 1960.

Simmons, William S. 1988. “Culture Theory in Contemporary Ethnohistory.” In Ethnohistory 35.1: 1-14.

Relates theoretical shifts from synchronic to diachronic or universal to particular concepts of

culture or consciousness to anthropology’s neglect of impacts of the “world-system” on its
“timeless primitive;” to history’s anthropological turn; and to ethnohistory’s correlation of historical
records and ethnographic present. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Thomas, Nicholas. 1996. Out of Time: History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.

Traces enduring covert evolutionism of the anthropology of Polynesia to ethnography’s systemic

timelessness which prevents simply grafting history onto conventional anthropology. Seeks
transformative conjuncture of history’s and anthropology’s practices, rather than mere links or
ethnohistory’s “marginal overlap.” Originally published 1989.
Wolf, Eric R. 2010. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London:
University of California Press.

Combines Marxian theory, political economy, anthropology, and history to challenge stereotypes
that non-European communities were isolated and static before Europeans brought history,
change, and capitalism after 1400. Originally published 1982.

Terms and Method

If ethnohistory per se is theoretically limited, it is also semantically eclectic and methodologically prolific.
This section and its subsections address questions of meaning and method by sampling diverse
definitions of the term *Ethnohistory* and varied strategies for its practice by anthropologists and
historians, collated under *Ethnohistory*, *Ethnographic History* (including historical ethnography),
*Anthropology and History*, and *Anthropology of History*. Citations in this section include programmatic
statements, in some cases elaborated and exemplified in monographs cited in other sections.

Ethnohistory
Ethnohistory is usually classed as a research method or subfield of anthropology, rather than an
independent discipline or subdiscipline. Fenton 1952 foresees need for historical training in Native
American ethnology, formalized as ethnohistory after 1954 and debated in **“Symposium on the Concept
of Ethnohistory”** 1961. Ethnohistorical methods were later applied in other geographical, ethnic, and
disciplinary settings by self-styled ethnohistorians, historical anthropologists, and ethnographic historians,
along with wider methodological reflection on relationships between anthropology and history (see
*Ethnographic History* and *Anthropology and History*). There is no consensus on ethnohistory’s
meaning, methods, scope, or validity. Sturtevant 1966 (see under *General Overviews*) differentiates
historical ethnography (synchronic reconstruction of a past culture using contemporary written
documents), diachronic ethnohistories of mainly nonliterate cultures, and folk history (the “common view”
of the past and its uses). Cohn 1968 (see under *General Overviews*) notes ethnohistory’s extension
beyond the Americas, particularly in Africa and Oceania, as “historical study of any non-European
peoples,” and to areas with long literary traditions in Asia and Europe. Social anthropologist Abler 1982
wants a more “positivistic, scientific” ethnohistory, relevant to his own discipline. Ethnohistorian DeMallie
1993 sees history as crucial to understanding culture, conflated with culture change. Historian Axtell
1978 defines ethnohistory as a “hybrid” approach to cultural process and change. Anticipating later
demand for “ethnographies of historicity” (see Hirsch and Stewart 2005 under *Anthropology of History*),
anthropologist Hudson 1966 calls for attention to folk history (people’s own beliefs about their past), while
DeMallie 1993 regards Native American narratives as expressions of Indigenous epistemology, contorted
in rationalist historical narrativization. Africanist Peel 1995 repositions ethnohistory as current historical
representations of any people in any social setting and also celebrates Indigenous narratives. Pacific
historian Dening 1991 defines ethnohistory similarly as conversation about historical consciousness. He
counters critique that the term is only applied to “primitive or traditional cultures” with the aphorism that
“‘ethno-’ does not mean ‘primitive’ any more than ‘anthro-’ does.”
*Abler, Thomas S. 1982. “Ethnohistory: A Choice Between Being Anthropology or Being Nothing.” In
Central Issues in Anthropology 4.1: 45-61
[https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/cia.1982.4.1.45]*.

Deplores ethnohistory’s minimal impact on anthropology and attributes alleged history-derived

deficiencies – chronological obsession and exclusion of culture – to “applied” origins in land
claims litigation. Condemns ethnohistorians’ “characteristic” neglect of theory and comparison
and recommends more rigorous, positivistic ethnohistory within anthropology.

Axtell, James. 1978. “The Ethnohistory of Early America: A Review Essay.” In William and Mary
Quarterly 35.1:110-144.

Reflects on ethnohistory, its nature, methods, and future directions while reviewing major works
on the ethnohistory of “cultural contact,” particularly on colonial US frontiers – including Jennings
1975 and Trigger 2000, see under *US and Canada*. Available online by purchase or
subscription.

DeMallie, Raymond J. 1993. “‘These Have No Ears’: Narrative and the Ethnohistorical Method.” In
Ethnohistory 40.4: 515-538.

Powerful argument for ethnohistory’s potential to synthesize anthropologists’ analysis with

historians’ narrative, providing both “have ears,” especially for Indigenous viewpoints expressed
in vernacular materials, including early native-language documentation. Available online by
purchase or subscription.

Dening, Greg. 1991. “A Poetic for Histories: Transformations that Present the Past.” In Clio in Oceania:
Toward a Historical Anthropology. Edited by Aletta Biersack, 347-380. Washington, DC, and London:
Smithsonian Institution Press.

Ultra-reflexive exposition of his ethnohistorical practice as “the history and the anthropology of
‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ alike,” particularly during culture contacts. Uncouples history from its
disciplinary straitjacket by recasting it as a human universal involving present public knowledge
of the past, including memory. Fenton, William N. 1952. “The Training of Historical Ethnologists
in America.” In American Anthropologist, New Series 54.3: 328-339.

Programmatic call by a Bureau of American Ethnology member for the “strictly historical science”
of cultural anthropology to give temporal and spatial depth to reconstructed cultures by exploiting
all available resources – archival, published, oral, visual, musical, material. Available online by
purchase or subscription.

Hudson, Charles. 1966. “Folk History and Ethnohistory.” In Ethnohistory 13.1-2: 52-70.

Presciently distinguishes ethnohistory (“history in the usual sense”) from folk history (people’s
logical beliefs about their own past). Dissolves opposition of synchronic and diachronic by
arguing that a belief system articulates present, past, and future, so structure, process, and
change can be rethought. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Peel, J.D.Y. 1995. “For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things? Missionary Narratives and
Historical Anthropology.” In Comparative Studies in Society and History 37.3: 581-607.
 Argues that narrative is a universal human capacity underpinning all historical consciousness
and agency, exemplified in the rich Church Missionary Society archive of journals by Africans
involved in the 19th-century evangelization of Yorubaland (West Africa). Available online by
purchase or subscription.

**“Symposium on the Concept of Ethnohistory”**. 1961. In Ethnohistory 8.1: 12-92.

Uneasy attempt at consensus on the definition, aims, subjects, sources, methods, and validity of
ethnohistory by a folklorist, historian, archaeologist, and anthropologist; commentary by three
anthropologists in Ethnohistory 8.3: 256-280. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Ethnographic History
Ethnographic history is implied by Schlözer 1772 whose neologism “ethnographic” labels his historical
“method” applied in the study of peoples (Völkerkunde, ethnology) encountered during early 18th-century
Russian scientific expeditions in Siberia. Ethnographic history prospered from around 1970 to 2000,
applied mainly by historians to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous pasts. Its Janus face is historical
ethnography – synchronic cultural reconstruction as prelude to narrating historical transformation.
Citations in this subsection are epistemological and methodological reflections on varied history-making.
Annales school historian Le Roy Ladurie 1977 outlines the method and logic for his “motionless”
historical demography, informed by structuralist anthropology (see Le Roy Ladurie 1978 under *Europe*).
Geertz 1990 (see separate Oxford Bibliographies article *Clifford Geertz[obo 9780199766567-0035]*)
applies the label “Melbourne Group” to Australian ethnographic historians who adapted his cultural
hermeneutics and method of “thick description” to evoke past traditional cultures and their
transformations in colonial Virginia (see Isaac 1999 under *US and Canada*), Yucatan (see Clendinnen
2003 under *Latin America and the Caribbean*), and the Marquesas (see Dening 1988 under
*Oceania*). Isaac 1980 outlines his action-oriented method for excavating people’s situated past realities
through deep immersion in traces of things they did, in their own cultural terms. Price 1990 explains his
similar approach and “experiment in multivocality” to evoke a past African American world and its present
resonances. Douglas 1998, sceptical of Geertz’s holistic culture concept, uses various anthropological
theories to illuminate Indigenous actions and appropriations in colonial contexts in New Caledonia. All
share a broad commitment to disentangling lived realities of specific past people, with parallels in “new”
cultural history, microhistory, and “history from below” (see Burke 2008, Davis 1975, and Ginzburg 2013
under *Europe* and Levi 2001 and Thompson 1979 under *Anthropology and History*).

Douglas, Bronwen. 1998. Across the Great Divide: Journeys in History and Anthropology . Amsterdam:
Harwood Academic Publishers.

Traces an intellectual trajectory from “island-centred” Pacific history to ethnographic history and
engagements with anthropology and the Melbourne Group, condensed in studies of Indigenous
encounters with French colonialism and Christianity in New Caledonia. Ebook 2013 available
*online [https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134410781]* by purchase.

Geertz, Clifford. 1990. “History and Anthropology.” New Literary History 21.2: 321-335.

Reflects on disciplinary angst over recent conjoining of History and Anthropology. Approves
interpretive strategies deployed by the Melbourne Group of ethnographic historians to address
 disruption of established cultural structures at very different times and places. Available online by
purchase or subscription.

Isaac, Rhys. 1980. “Ethnographic Method in History: An Action Approach.” In Historical Methods 13.1:
43-61.

Colonial historian of Virginia and Melbourne Group member discusses an “action-oriented”

application of ethnographers’ methods and concepts to reconstruct a past culture and narrate its
transformation. Republished in Isaac 1999, see under *US and Canada*. Available online by
purchase or subscription.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. 1977. “Motionless History.” Social Science History 1.2: 115-136.

Explains the logic of his historical demography of a presumed “practically motorless traditional”
rural society in France over four centuries, preceding an “avalanche” of unexamined change after
1720. Originally published 1974 as “L’histoire immobile” in ** Annales**. Available online by
purchase or subscription.

Price, Richard. 1990. Ethnographic History, Caribbean Pasts. College Park: Department of Portuguese
and Spanish, University of Maryland.

Working paper outlining the experimental multivocal method and rhetorical strategy deployed in
the acclaimed ethnographic history Alabi’s World (see Price 1990 under *Latin America and the
Caribbean*). Invokes Geertzian hermeneutics and Dening 1991 (see under *Ethnohistory*).

*Schlözer, August Ludwig. 1772. Vorstellung seiner Universal-Historie [Introduction to his universal
history]. Vol. 1. Göttingen and Gotha: Johann Christian Dieterich
[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=5alRAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP11#v=onepage&q&f=false].*

Eighteenth-century German historian’s proposal of the adjective ethnographisch (ethnographic)

to specify his “method,” which makes Völker (peoples, language communities) the main subjects
of world-history, instead of periods (“chronographic” method), inventions (“technographic”), or
countries (“geographic”). See Vermeulen 2015 under *Anthropology and History*.
Anthropology and History This subsection briefly samples the vast definitional and methodological
literature on interrelations of anthropology and history. Vermeulen 2015 unsettles standard histories of
anthropology by tracing the first explicitly ethnographic Völker-Beschreibung (description of peoples,
including their histories) to German scholars involved in Russian exploration of Siberia in the 1730s.
From early inception until well after World War II, anthropological fieldwork was usually enabled by
colonialism or located in colonized places. Yet until the 1980s, most ethnographies downplayed, elided,
or ignored such historical positioning and essentialized particular societies in an ahistoric “traditional”
ethnographic present. There were some exceptions. The “Manchester school” of social anthropology
addressed social and cultural processes and conflict after 1947 (see separate Oxford Bibliographies
article *Anthropology of Africa [obo-9780199766567-0134]*). African Studies programs – such as at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison (US) under Jan Vansina and Philip Curtin from 1961 and the University
of Birmingham (UK) under John Fage from 1963 – were explicitly interdisciplinary. Evans-Pritchard 1961
called for bridging of the disciplines and Cohn 1987 (1962) for more “fruitful collaboration.” Social
historians like Thompson 1979 engaged productively with anthropology from the early 1960s. In France,
interchange between structuralist anthropology and social history of the longue durée (long term)
encouraged structural determinism and neglect of human agency (see Le Roy Ladurie 1977 under
*Ethnographic History*). In Italy, diverse historians, including Levi 2001, developed microhistory, rejecting
longue durée history in dialogue with variants of anthropology. Declining legitimacy of hermetic
functionalist, culturalist, and structuralist approaches and anthropology’s rehistoricization in the 1980s
occurred in contexts of non-European nationalism, decolonization, and biting postcolonial critique of the
politics of anthropological representation, exemplified by **“Anthropology and History in the 1980s”**
1981, Cohn 1987, Harris 1995, Rosaldo 1986, and the collection in which his chapter appears. Comaroff
and Comaroff 1992 and Wachtel 2014 argue respectively for more historical anthropologies and more
anthropological histories.

**“Anthropology and History in the 1980s”**. 1981. In Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12.2: 227-278.

Part of two special issues on “The New History.” Anthropologist Bernard Cohn seeks a “difficult”
interdisciplinary epistemological accord. His colleague John Adams condemns colonial US
historians for misusing anthropological concepts. Historians Natalie Davis and Carlo Ginzburg
discuss anthropology’s utility for social history. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Cohn, Bernard S. 1987. An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Reprints Cohn’s seminal essays (originally published 1962, 1980, and 1981, see
**“Anthropology and History in the 1980s”** 1981) on conjoining anthropology and history to illuminate
dynamic mutual constitution of colonizer and colonized. Ranajit Guha’s introduction and 20 substantive
chapters show Cohn’s thinking and method at work in South Asia.

Comaroff, John, and Comaroff, Jean. 1992. Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Boulder, San
Francisco, and Oxford: Westview Press.

Essays using African examples to argue that a principled historical anthropology, creatively
engaged with cultural history, can revitalize the concept of culture and forge a “neomodern”
ethnographic practice, grasping the simultaneous unity and diversity of social processes while
refuting radical opposition of tradition and modernity.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1961. Anthropology and History: A Lecture. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.

Call by a leading British social anthropologist for anthropology and history to exploit mutual
affinities by exchanging methods (documentary critique; fieldwork) and perspectives (people’s
pasts; family as well as political history) to fashion a more historical anthropology and a more
sociological or ethnographic history.

Harris, Olivia. 1995. “‘The Coming of the White People:’ Reflections on the Mythologisation of History in
Latin America.” Bulletin of Latin American Research 14.1: 9-24.
Insightful article addressing ethical and political implications of the imposition of Eurocentric
periodization on Indigenous pasts. Critical of anthropologists’ historical practice, especially their
reinscription of the myth/history dichotomy, as in contributions to Hill 1988 (see under *Latin
American and the Caribbean*). Argues that local histories are plural and politically embedded.

Levi, Giovanni. 2001. “On Microhistory.” In New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Edited by Peter
Burke, 97-119. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Explains emergence of microhistory in Italy in the 1970s as a fine-grained, antipositivist, non-
idealist social historical practice, usually rooted in Marxism, with eclectic theoretical
underpinnings and close ties to interpretive anthropology, as well as important differences.
Originally published 1991.

Rosaldo, Renato. 1986. “From the Door of His Tent: The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor.” In Writing
Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 77-
97. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Rigorous comparative critique, by an advocate for a historical perspective in ethnography (see

Rosaldo 1980 under *Asia*), of the use of “pastoral” rhetorics of authority to suppress the politics
of domination in Le Roy Ladurie’s historical ethnography Montaillou (see Le Roy Ladurie 1978
under *Europe*) and Evans-Pritchard’s classic 1940 ethnography The Nuer.

Thompson, E.P. 1979. Folklore, Anthropology and Social History. Brighton: John L. Noyce.

Revised methodological address by a Marxist social historian, who defends recourse to folklore
and eclectic appropriation of anthropological theory as crucial for grasping the cultural content or
meaning of popular customs and rituals in 18th-century England. Originally published 1978 in
Indian Historical Review.

Vermeulen, Han F. 2015. Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German
Enlightenment. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Outstanding intellectual history of anthropology from the early 18th to the early 20th centuries,
investigating German invention of the concepts ethnography and ethnology, their relationships
with anthropology and history, and subsequent transnational applications, transmutations, and
institutionalizations.

Wachtel, Nathan. 2014. Des archives aux terrains: essais d’anthropologie historique [From the archives
to the field: essays in historical anthropology]. Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil.
 Seminal articles by a pioneer French Annales school ethnohistorian, whose “regressive” strategy
shifts between field and archive; interrogates the past from present traces in folklore and
memories; and uses history to explicate anthropological problems, notably articulations of
memory and collective identity. Originally published 1966-2011.

Anthropology of History

Discussion of historicity in Hirsch and Stewart 2005 enables further articulation of the “anthropology of
history” in Palmié and Stewart 2016, appropriating a concept proposed by Sahlins 1985 and Dening
1995. This subfield of anthropology acknowledges only indirect descent from ethnohistory and earlier
convergences of anthropology and history, criticized for complicity in the universalized (but historically-
particular and parochial) idea of “history” in the formal Western sense. Although still consolidating, the
anthropology of history has produced significant monographs, including Lambek 2002 and Stewart 2017.

Dening, Greg. 1995. The Death of William Gooch: A History’s Anthropology . Carlton South: Melbourne
University Press.

Historian’s “ethnographic reflection” on the obscure life, Cambridge education, naval career, and
death of a British astronomer, killed with two companions at the Hawaiian island of Oahu in 1792.
Originally published 1988 as History’s Anthropology: The Death of William Gooch.

Hirsch, Eric, and Charles Stewart, ed. 2005. “Ethnographies of Historicity”. Special issue History and
Anthropology 16.3: 261-391.

The editors relativize and historicize Western historiography in a manifesto for the ethnographic
study of historicity – how people in different times and places think and use ideas of “past-
present-future.” Essays showcase ethnographic approaches to historicity in Pacific, European,
and Inuit communities. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Lambek, Michael. 2002. The Weight of the Past: Living With History in Mahajanga, Madagascar . New
York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Persuasively links history to the ritual sustenance and making of royal power in Madagascar.
Analyzes spirit possession as a form of relationship to the past and provides a rare perspective
on history-making as the result of division of labour.

Palmié, Stephan, and Charles Stewart. 2016. “Introduction: For an Anthropology of History”. In HAU:
Journal of Ethnographic Theory 6.1: 207-236.

Introduction to a special section on the anthropology of history challenging the (Western)

historicist bias of anthropology’s “historic turn” as inapplicable to other forms of historical
knowledge. Lays conceptual grounds for an anthropology of plural modes of thinking and
practicing history worldwide. Available online by open access.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Seminal essays in conversation with the Annales school, exploring the structure-transformation
relationship in Pacific Islands histories and introducing the concept of anthropology of history.
See separate Oxford Bibliographies article *Marshall Sahlins[obo-9780199766567-0076]*
Stewart, Charles. 2017. Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press.

Examines the emergence, demise, and resurgence of visions and dreams as sources of
knowledge about past, present, and future in the Greek Islands, linked to junctures of socio-
economic crisis. Striking analysis of a form of historical consciousness over more than two
centuries, respectful of the historical specificities of different periods. Originally published 2012.

US and Canada

This commentary focuses on works cited in this section, since ethnohistory’s North American history is
sketched elsewhere (see *General Overviews*, *Theory*, *Ethnohistory*). Jennings 2010, Fenton 1988,
and Trigger 2000 are classic ethnohistories, showcasing initial concern for the history and early
European contacts of Native American groups. Powell 1981 pays sustained attention to Indigenous
standpoints and narratives, anticipating more recent concern for historicities and historical consciousness
(see *Anthropology of History*). Clifford 1988 is partly a case study in ethnohistory’s originating
application in Native American land claims litigation. Isaac 1999 and Merwick 2006 are challenging
ethnographic histories of European communities and inter-ethnic relations in colonial Northeastern
America by Melbourne Group members (see *Ethnographic History*). The review of Isaac 1999 by Breen
1983 exemplifies a common complaint that ethnohistory and other closely focused historical strategies
are fragmentary, unrepresentative, and ignore wider settings which encompass the particular. See also
Di Rosa 2018 under *Theory*.

Breen, T.H. 1983. [Review of] Rhys Isaac,The Transformation of Virginia, 1840-1790. In William and
Mary Quarterly 40.2:298–302.

Historian’s review of Isaac 1999 (1982), rated “boldly original” but “not entirely persuasive.”
Illustrates negative critique of ethnographic history and cultural hermeneutics: that “particular
moments of tension” are not contextualized within the “larger society” and examples are not well-
integrated. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Clifford, James. 1988. “Identity in Mashpee.” In The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century

Ethnography, Literature, and Art, 277-346. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press.

Long essay juxtaposing varied testimony presented during a 1976 lawsuit to determine a claim to
continuous tribal identity of a Native American community at Cape Cod. Contending histories
demonstrate the deep ambiguities of ethnohistorical advocacy in action, for and against the
Indigenous litigants.

Fenton, William N. 1998. The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois
Confederacy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Empirical ethnohistory of the Iroquois League and Confederacy from the 16th to the late 18th
centuries, applying the method of “upstreaming” – “proceeding from verified present-day
observations to earlier, fragmentary accounts by witnesses” – to establish major cultural patterns
and chronologies.
Isaac, Rhys. 1999. The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790. Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and
University of North Carolina Press.

Influential Pulitzer Prize-winning “ethnographic everybody’s history.” Investigates religious and

political transformations in late colonial Virginia by combining an “ethnographic-dramaturgic
approach” with close reading of “texts,” broadly conceived, to elucidate actions and interactions
of particular people in specific settings. Originally published 1982.

Jennings, Francis. 2010. The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest.
Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press.
Revisionist ethnohistory of colonial European-Indigenous relations in New England, discrediting
traditional US historiography as deliberate ideological distortion. Endorses widespread
Indigenous conviction that their lands were invaded and conquered and depicts modern US
society as the distant product of symbiotic interdependence of Europeans and Native Americans.
Originally published 1975.

Merwick, Donna. 2006. The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Uses the metaphors of theatre and performance to fashion a vivid history of the unintended lethal
impact on Indigenous people of 17th-century encounters between Algonquian speakers and
Europeans at the Dutch trading base of New Netherland.

Powell, Peter John. 1981. People of the Sacred Mountain: A History of the Northern Cheyenne Chiefs
and Warrior Societies, 1830-1879, with an Epilogue 1969-1974, 2 vols. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Monumental history of the Cheyenne people, their struggles against local and foreign enemies,
and eventual colonial expropriation, by an Episcopalian priest, scholar, adopted Cheyenne family
member, and chief. Privileges Indigenous perspectives and narrative mode, drawing on oral
histories and a voluminous vernacular and Euro-American archive.

Trigger, Bruce G. 2000. The Children of Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. Montreal and
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

An Indigenous-centred, materialist ethnohistory of the Huron (Wendat) confederacy of eastern

Canada to 1660. Integrates archaeology, early European documentation, linguistics, and
geography to demonstrate Iroquoian cultural dynamics before and after European contact,
refuting stereotypes of static, timeless Indian worlds. Originally published 1976.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Wachtel 1977 and Clendinnen 1991 and Clendinnen 2003 epitomize the upsurge of ethnohistorical
writing on Latin America from the 1960s, enabled by an enormous colonial and even precolonial archive
and rich folk histories. Historical anthropology in the region has produced a considerable literature on
historical consciousness or historicity. Hill 1988 and Fausto and Heckenberger 2007 directly confront the
legacy of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralist work on myths, while Abercrombie 1998 and Rappaport 1998
address the politics of history- and memory-making. Relevant literature on the Caribbean (see separate
Oxford Bibliographies article *Caribbean[obo-9780199766567-0100]*) is distinct from Latin America,
ranging from the global political-economic approach of Mintz 1986, to the experimental ethnographic
history of Price 1990, and the epistemological insights of Trouillot 2015.

Abercrombie, Thomas A. 1998. Pathways of Memory and Power: Ethnography and History Among an
Andean People. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

History of encounters by K’ulta people with varied state formations across five centuries.
Combines close attention to changing local modes of presenting and understanding the past,
with rigorous historical and ethnographic critique, and a reflexive self-critical stance.

Clendinnen, Inga. 1991. Aztecs: An Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Renowned historical ethnography of the Aztecs (Mexica) of Central Mexico by a Melbourne

Group member (see *Ethnographic History*). Creatively reads Spanish and Nahuatl materials to
reconstitute key aspects of early 16th-century pre-conquest Aztec life. Ebook 2014 available
*online [https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107589094]* by purchase.

Clendinnen, Inga. 2003. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Admired monograph juxtaposing an ethnographic history of Spanish intruders and a historical

ethnography of resident Maya in 16th-century Yucatan. Interrogates what both “thought in good
faith they were up to” during mutually incomprehensible encounters. Originally published 1987.

Fausto, Carlos and Michael Heckenberger, ed. 2007. Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia:
Anthropological Perspectives. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

A theoretically-sophisticated introduction prefaces case studies of Indigenous notions of time and

change in Amazonia and the mutually constitutive relationship between historical consciousness
and identity formation.

Hill, Jonathan D., ed. 1988. Rethinking History and Myth: Indigenous South American Perspectives on
the Past. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Case studies of historically-situated Indigenous interpretations of past events in contexts of

contact with global political-economic forces. Includes Terence Turner’s theoretically-important
chapter “Ethno-Ethnohistory: Myth and History in Native South American Representations of
Contact with Western Society.”

Mintz, Sydney W. 1986. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History . New York:
Penguin Books.

Influential anthropological history of sugar production and consumption from a political-economic

standpoint, showing Caribbean centrality in development of slavery and British and global
capitalism (see separate Oxford Bibliographies article *Food[obo-9780199766567-0147]*).
Ebook available *online [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/322123/sweetness-and-
power-by-sidney-w-mintz/9780140092332]* by purchase.

Price, Richard. 1990. Alabi’s World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Award-winning, “self-styled ethnographic historian” evokes the 18th-century world of a nation of

escaped slaves (Maroons) in Dutch colonial Suriname. Moves through multiple voices identified
 by typeface, which differentiates varied colonial texts and oral testimony by descendants of the
revered Saramaka leader Alabi. See Price 1990 under *Ethnographic History*.

Rappaport, Joanne. 1998.The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian
Andes. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Fine historical ethnography of the historical consciousness of Nasa people seen through the
prism of three local intellectuals, whose voices engage with the history of domination from
Spanish conquest to the republican state in order to assert identity and land claims. Originally
published 1990.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2015. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon
Press.

Penetrating exposition of power relations in the production of historical texts and history-making,
exemplified mainly from Haiti’s past. Sets history’s semantic ambiguity as “what happened” and
what “is said to have happened” in relation to the privileging of academic history over lived
historicities. Originally published 1995. Ebook available *online
[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246609/silencing-the-past-20th-anniversary-
edition-by-michel-rolph-trouillot/9780807080535/]* by purchase.

Wachtel, Nathan. 1977. The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru Through Indian
Eyes, 1530-1570. Translated by Ben and Siân Reynolds. Hassocks: Harvester Press.

An Annales school member’s ethnohistorical reconstruction of Indigenous actions and

experience during and after the conquest of Peru, based on translations of early Indigenous
texts, Spanish accounts, and surviving folk histories. Originally published 1971 as La vision des
vaincus: les indiens du Perou devant la conquête espagnole, 1530-1570 (2nd edition, 1992).

Africa

The label ethnohistory is not much applied to work on Africa, though Steinhart 1989 acknowledges that
historical research in African Studies often amounts to ethnohistory – particularly the signature Africanist
method of oral history, as in Vansina 1990. Wilks 1989 is an epic documentary history of a precolonial
African kingdom, guided by interviews with Indigenous leaders. Long dominated by ahistorical British
functionalism and French structuralism, Africanist anthropology was historically animated by processual
approaches under Gluckman’s leadership at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia
(Zambia) after 1941 and later at the University of Manchester (UK) (see separate Oxford Bibliographies
article *Max Gluckman[obo-9780199766567-0052]*). Four works cited deal with religious change, since
dialectical interactions of Indigenous and world religions, particularly Christianity, are staples in the
historical anthropology of Africa (see Peel 1995 under *Ethnohistory* and his “Comment” in Douglas
2001 under *Oceania*). Comaroff and Comaroff 1991 marry ethnographic fieldwork with archival
research to illuminate both sides of Indigenous encounters with Protestant Christianity in Southern Africa.
Islam has been more neglected, but Evans-Pritchard 1949 outlines the history and anticolonial politics of
an Islamic order amongst Bedouin in North Africa; Loimeier 2013 historicizes Islam comparatively as a
crucial element in African pasts since the seventh century; and Peel 2016 positions Islam as one of three
interacting religions – “traditional,” Christian, and Muslim – in a single society in Southern Nigeria. Fabian
and Tshibumba Kanda Matulu 1996 is an extraordinary Indigenous history of Zaire, drawn, spoken, and
performed by a Zairian and published in collaboration with a historical anthropologist. See separate
Oxford Bibliographies articles *Anthropology of Africa [obo-9780199766567-0134]*; *Anthropology of
Christianity[obo-9780199766567-0089]*; and *Anthropology of Islam[obo-9780199766567-0175]*.

Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and
Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Archive- and fieldwork-based historical ethnography of the 19th-century encounter between

Nonconformist British evangelists and Tswana people of the South Africa-Botswana borderland.
Qualifies Indigenous agency by centering missionaries as brokers of cultural idioms enabling the
eventual penetration of capitalism.

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Pioneer history by a doyen of British social anthropology, combining library research with two
years’ wartime field experience in Cyrenaica (Libya). An ethnological sketch of Bedouin people
prefaces a history of the 19th-century development of the Islamic Sanusiya Order amongst them
and opposition of the order and its charismatic leader to Italian colonialism.

Fabian, Johannes, and Tshibumba Kanda Matulu. 1996. Remembering the Present: Painting and
Popular History in Zaire. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

A remarkable “History of Zaire” painted, performed, and narrated in Swahili in the 1970s by the
Zairian painter-historian Tshibumba Kanda Matulu. His work is curated, translated, located in
ethnographic, “historiological,” and biographical perspectives, and published by a historical
anthropologist of the Belgian Congo/Zaire.

Loimeier, Roman. 2013. Muslim Societies in Africa: A Historical Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.

An ecologically-informed historical anthropology of sundry Islamic engagements with particular

African worlds over more than a millennium, attentive to the reciprocal impact of local and wider
contexts in shaping different strands of Islam and their legacies, with a detailed multi-lingual
bibliography.

Peel, J.D.Y. 2016. Christianity, Islam, and Oriṣa Religion: Three Traditions in Comparison and
Interaction. Oakland: University of California Press.

Outstanding monograph – last of a trilogy beginning in 1968 – based on historical research and
ethnographic fieldwork, using the method of comparison to chart adaptations and conflicts which
reconfigured and largely supplanted the Indigenous Yoruba (West Africa) oriṣa religion during
more than a century of three-way interactions with Christianity and Islam.

Steinhart, Edward I., ed. 1989. “Ethnohistory and Africa.” Special issue Ethnohistory 36.1: 1-88.

Praises North American ethnohistory as well ahead of African history, stultified by long-term
impact of ahistorical British and French anthropology. Illustrates the use after 1970 of more
critical methods and a wider range of oral and documentary materials, including African
vernacular writings. Available online by purchase or subscription.
Vansina, Jan. 1990. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa .
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

History of diverse traditional societies in Central Africa over five millennia by a renowned
specialist on African oral tradition. Rich non-written materials inform a positivist interdisciplinary
analysis, prefaced by reflections on the linguistic and lexical method adopted for dating and
sequencing.

Wilks, Ivor. 1989. Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Political synthesis by an eminent Africanist historian, guided by distinguished Indigenous

interlocutors, of the structural consolidation of the Asante kingdom (Ghana) into a 19th-century
centralized state. A “Preamble” to the second edition admits that the central focus neglects local
politics and important socio-cultural elements such as religion. Originally published 1975.

Asia
Citations in this section span diverse genres and long time periods but emphasize South Asia –
acknowledging the region’s salience in the overlapping projects of ethnohistory, popular history, and
historical anthropology – and sample work elsewhere in the continent. Mathur 2000 is a compact
overview of prolific output in the historical anthropology of South Asia after 1980, anticipated by
ethnohistorical practice in the 1970s and galvanized by subaltern, postcolonial, and gender studies. Dirks
1993 is a groundbreaking ethnohistory of a kingdom in South India. Guha 1999 marries history,
sociology, Gramsci, and critical theory to recuperate peasant historical consciousness in colonial India,
inaugurating the globally powerful field of subaltern studies. Sivaramakrishnan 1995 situates that project
in relation to selective engagements with anthropology. Beyond South Asia, Ohnuku-Tierney 1987 traces
the long-term interplay of structure and history in Japan, through the lens of shifting meanings of a key
symbol. Harrell 1995 collates ethnohistorical essays on rival “civilizing” strategies and the making of
imperial, colonial, and national knowledge about “ethnic minorities” in China. Shryock 1997 and
Manoukian 2012 apply different genealogical methods to explicate contested history-making and uncover
local historical consciousness in “tribal” Jordan and urban Iran. Rosaldo 1980 stimulated the “historic
turn” in US cultural anthropology by taking Indigenous Filipino stories seriously as histories, not just
cultural statements. Stoler 2009 illustrates her original critical method for anthropological exploitation of
colonial archives with detailed reference to episodes in the Dutch East Indies.

Dirks, Nicholas B. 1993.The Hollow Crown: Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.

Pioneer ethnohistory of a South Indian “little kingdom” by a historically-trained anthropologist who

historicizes over six centuries once static concepts in the anthropology of India, including
kingship, social organization, ritual, tradition, colonialism, and modernity. Originally published
1987.

Guha, Ranajit. 1999. Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Durham and London:
Duke University Press.
 Brilliant study of 19th-century popular movements in colonial India by a Marxist historian who
reads through the “distorting mirror” of official or elite texts to excavate the historical
consciousness of insurgent peasants in their own terms. Foundation document for the Subaltern
Studies collective (see **Subaltern Studies** under *Journals*). Originally published 1983.

Harrell, Stevan, ed. 1995. Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.

Ethnohistorical essays by nine anthropologists and a political scientist on the socio-cultural

history of the production of knowledge about “peripheral peoples” by the centralized Han state in
China. The introduction subverts the simple dichotomy of colonizer and colonized by comparing
Confucian, Euro-American Christian, and Communist “civilizing projects.”

Manoukian, Setrag. 2012. City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran: Shiraz, History and Poetry.
Milton Park, UK, and New York: Routledge.

A Foucauldian “genealogical ethnography” of relationships between history, poetry, and politics

in the making of modern Iran, specifically in constituting Shiraz as a “city of knowledge” through
conscious use of key historical and literary writings. Shows the historical enmeshment of forms of
knowledge with urban transformation, shifting state organization, and everyday local practices.

Mathur, Saloni. 2000. “History and Anthropology in South Asia: Rethinking the Archive.” In Annual
Review of Anthropology 29: 89-106.

Surveys anthropology’s conjunctures with history in South Asia, from ethnohistory’s displacement
of ahistoric village ethnography in the 1970s to historical anthropology’s focus after 1980 on the
enmeshment of power and history in colonialism, the archive, nationalism, subaltern history,
ethnic and gendered violence, and feminist critique. Available online by purchase or subscription.

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1987. The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and
Ritual. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Canonical case of symbolic anthropology’s keen embrace of history in the 1980s. Analyzes the
polysemic symbol of the monkey and related people and rituals in Japanese culture from the 8th
to the 20th centuries. See Ohnuki-Tierney 1990 under *Theory*.

Rosaldo, Renato. 1980. Ilongot Headhunting 1883-1974: A Study in Society and History. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.

Seminal ethnographic history of a Philippines community by an anthropologist who defies

convention by adopting history’s narrative form. His concept of Indigenous stories as both
cultural texts and historical documents necessitates rethinking of social structure as both given
and constructed and challenges the myth of the timeless primitive.

Shryock, Andrew. 1997. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual
Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Outstanding monograph on the politics of history-making in an emerging nation-state in West

Asia, attentive to issues of authority and legitimacy between oral and written histories in a period
of political transition. Brings local voices to life without losing analytical rigor.
Sivaramakrishnan, K. 1995. “Situating the Subaltern: History and Anthropology in the Subaltern Studies
Project.” Journal of Historical Sociology 8.4: 396-429.

Overview and balanced critique of mobile, selective liaisons with anthropology in subaltern
studies writings, illuminating diverse strategies for analytic fusion of the concepts of history and
culture. Includes an important evaluation of internal tensions and shifting emphases within the
subaltern studies project itself. Available online by purchase.

Stoler, Ann Laura. 2009. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense.
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Anthropological history recounting “minor” histories to show that colonial archives in Dutch East
Indies were not neutral “sources” of knowledge but unreliable technologies for its production by
harried administrators to serve unstable state power. Details official struggles to reconcile
ambiguous racial categories with shifting formal rules and intractable, unclassifiable subjects.

Oceania

Since 1960, Oceania has been a key locus for *Ethnohistory*, *Ethnographic history*, oral history, and
historical anthropology, and inspired the emergent concept of anthropology of history (see Sahlins 1985
and Dening 1995 under *Anthropology of History*). Three very different works by eminent scholars
address early culture contacts in Polynesia. Dening 1988 is a reflexive ethnohistory of the ruinous impact
of European intrusion in the Marquesas. Sahlins 1981 is a historical anthropology which makes Hawaiian
history a backdrop to theorize the transformation of cultural structure “in the event.” Salmond 1991 is an
ethnographic history narrating Māori encounters with Europeans in New Zealand. Denoon and Lacey
1981 underscore the political and moral importance of oral traditions and testimonies for creating “a truly
autonomous and indigenous history” in the new nation of Papua New Guinea. Kituai 1998 and Perez
Hattori 2004 are by Indigenous historians, who skilfully combine oral and documentary materials to
reveal paradoxes and tensions within seemingly dominant colonial regimes in Papua New Guinea and
Guam. Neumann 1992 and Hokari 2011 are innovative histories of a Papua New Guinean and an
Aboriginal Australian community, both foregrounding Indigenous voices. Douglas 2001 is a historical
critique of the anthropological romanticism which elided Christianity in most ethnographies of Melanesia
before the 1980s and the ambivalent exoticism which thereafter saw increasing ethnographic focus on
millenarian and Pentecostal movements. Exempt from this critique, Giay 1995 is a brilliant ethnohistory
by a Papuan anthropologist of a group of anticolonial Christian communities in Irian Jaya and their
charismatic prophet.

Dening. Greg. 1988. Islands and Beaches, Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas 1774-1880. Chicago:
Dorsey Press.
Influential work by a Melbourne Group member (see *Ethnographic History*). Intersperses
elegiac evocation of the destruction of Marquesans and their culture, during a century of contacts
with European intruders, with methodological and conceptual “Reflections.” The first meditates
on history, anthropology, and ethnohistory. Originally published 1980.

*Denoon, Donald, and Roderic Lacey, ed. 1981. Oral Tradition in Melanesia. Port Moresby: University of
Papua New Guinea and Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies [https://openresearch-
repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/126307/1/Oral_Tradition_in_Melanesia.pdf].*
 Indigenous oral histories workshopped by historians and students at the University of Papua New
Guinea shortly after Independence. The editors stress their legitimacy as situated expressions of
local knowledge and ideas of history, and their potential to reveal colonial or elite dependence on
local agency and establish dating independent of European chronologies.

Douglas, Bronwen. 2001. “From Invisible Christians to Gothic Theatre: The Romance of the Millennial in
Melanesian Anthropology.” In Current Anthropology 42.5: 615-650.

An anthropological historian’s critical history and bibliography of the ethnography of Pentecostal

Christianity in Melanesia, highlighting Indigenous agency in ethnographic production and set in
relation to the anthropology of Indigenous religiosity, within which local Christianities were
virtually invisible before the 1980s. Available online by purchase or subscription.

*Giay, Benny. 1995. Zahkeus Pakage and His Communities: Indigenous Religious Discourse, Socio-
political Resistance, and Ethnohistory of the Me of Irian Jaya. Amsterdam: VU University Press
[https://www.papuaerfgoed.org/en/BK/40/94].*

Published doctoral thesis by a Papuan evangelical pastor, theologian, and anthropologist on an

anticolonial religious movement in Irian Jaya (now Papua Province, Indonesia), which tried after
1950 to reconcile “tradition” and millenarian Christianity. A notable ethnohistory of local concepts
of culture, history, and identity, based on oral histories, ethnographies, and archival research.

Hokari, Minoru. 2011. Gurindji Journey: A Japanese Historian in the Outback . Sydney: University of New
South Wales Press.

Provocative history of Gurindji people in Northern Australia, interweaving multiple voices of

Gurindji elders with intimate reflections on the author’s personal transformation while “listening”
to them in the field. Conveys a powerful sense of particular Aboriginal pasts, embodied in daily
activities, places, and landscape.

Kituai, August Ibrum K. 1998. My Gun, My Brother: The World of the Papua New Guinea Colonial Police,
1920-1960. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Masterful history by an Indigenous scholar who draws on colonial records and oral histories to
uncover the crucial significance of “native police” in day-to-day administration of the Australian
colony of Papua New Guinea and demonstrate the practical functioning of a colonial state.

Neumann, Klaus. 1992. Not the Way It Really Was: Constructing the Tolai Past. Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press.

Experimental history of the colonial past of Tolai people in East New Britain (Papua New
Guinea), alternating narrative and reflections on method or epistemology and using collage to
assemble plural voices: the author’s linear narrative; his translations of Tolai stories told in the
field; and ethnographic descriptions of Tolai society.

Perez Hattori, Anne. 2004. Colonial Dis-Ease: US Navy Health Policies and the Chamorros of Guam,
1898-1941. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

An Indigenous Chamorro scholar’s history of ambiguous local agency in relation to authoritarian

health policies implemented by the US naval government in Guam before World War II. Blends
 intensive archival research with personal memories and oral histories, contextualized
ethnographically within Indigenous practice and colonial experience since the 17th century.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the
Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

First iteration of a cultural anthropologist’s very influential thesis that the transformation of cultural
structures in practice – “in the event” – is predicated in existing cultural logic, exemplified by
cultural change in Hawaii in the conjuncture of early Hawaiian encounters with Europeans,
particularly the British navigator Cook and his shipmates.

Salmond, Anne. 1991. Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans 1642-1772. Auckland:
Viking.

A semantic anthropologist’s ethnographic history of culturally-divergent understandings of early

encounters between New Zealand Māori and European navigators. A compelling narrative
woven from rich archival documentation in Māori and European languages, read through the lens
of long field experience, linguistic expertise, and Indigenous oral histories.

Europe

From the 1960s, the French journal **Annales** (see under *Journals*) was breeding ground for the
anthropologically-oriented “history of mentalities” and stimulated the emergence of Italian microhistory
(see Levi 2001 under *Anthropology and History* and Di Rosa 2018 under *Theory*); German
Alltagsgeschichte (history of the everyday), represented by Lüdtke 1995; and varieties of Anglophone
social history, including historical anthropology, encompassed by Burke 2008 under “cultural history.”
Davis 1975 and Ginzburg 2013 show how historians’ encounters with anthropology motivated a shift to
the study of marginal people in Europe, their practices and rituals, while Le Roy Ladurie 1978 recreates a
specific community analogous to the timeless “village” of traditional ethnographies. The historical turn
brought demography to the forefront, providing novel methodological and theoretical tools for the
historical anthropology of European societies. Cole and Wolf 1999 and Viazzo 1989 variously show how
demography can shed new light on standard themes such as ethnicity and kinship. Herzfeld 1987 notably
historicizes anthropology’s own categories as applied to the so-called margins of Europe.

Burke, Peter. 2008. What is Cultural History? Cambridge: Polity Press.

A practitioner’s concise introduction to several historiographical practices assembled under

cultural history, particularly historical anthropology as manifested from the 1960s to the 1990s in
Geertzian, ethnographic, popular, micro-, postcolonial, and feminist approaches. Originally
published 2004.

Cole, John W., and Eric R. Wolf. 1999. The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley.
Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

Landmark work by two anthropologists combining ethnography with centuries-long historical

contextualization and demographic depth. A focus on inheritance ideologies and practices shows
how two neighbouring communities, with the same ecology, forged different cultural and political
institutions and distinct ethnic and linguistic identities. Originally published 1974.
 Davis, Natalie Zemon. 1975. Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.

Influential essays by a social historian whose vibrant portrayal of urban and rural underclasses in
France shows their relationships to power during profound religious, political, and intellectual
transformations. Refracts the generative interplay of society and culture through sophisticated
theoretical prisms of gender and class.

Ginzburg, Carlo. 2013. The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by John and Anne C. Tedeschi. Baltimore: John Hopkins University
Press.

A social historian shows how ethnographic sensibility applied to archival materials can launch a
novel inquiry on a familiar topic – the Inquisition. Weaves into the narrative traces of archival
dead ends encountered in his production of historical knowledge. Originally published 1966 as I
Benandanti: Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento; original English edition 1992.

Herzfeld, Michael. 1987. Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of
Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Outstanding work by a polymath anthropologist using “exoticizing devices” to track the parallel
emergence of anthropology as a discipline and the modern Greek state. An intellectual and
political history grounded in deep ethnographic knowledge of Greece’s simultaneously marginal
and central place in a European identity.

Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. 1978. Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324.
Translated by Barbara Bray. London: Scolar.

Bestselling historical ethnography from the Annales school of an early 14th-century French
peasant community. Questioned for essentialism and uncritical reliance on Latin translations
inscribed in an Inquisition register of vernacular testimony given under interrogation (see Rosaldo
1986 under *Anthropology and History*). Ebook 2013 available *online
[https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/13632/montaillou/9780141977867.html]* by purchase.
Originally published 1975 as Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324; in the US 1978 as
Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error.

Lüdtke, Alf, ed. 1995. The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of
Life. Translated by William Templer. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Entrée to the German historical method of Alltagsgeschichte (history of the everyday),

sometimes called Historische Anthropologie (historical anthropology) and analogous to history
from below (see Thompson 1979 under *Anthropology and History*). Ebook 2018 available
*online [https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=BhJ2DwAAQBAJ]* by purchase.

Viazzo, Pier Paolo. 1989. Upland Communities: Environment, Population, and Social Structure in the
Alps since the Sixteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Uses demography to assess regional socio-cultural variation, skilfully blending ethnography,

history, and geography to challenge assumptions of ecological determinism.

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