Well, I'm very busily ensuring that I do *not* wade in on your discussion over at FB, which has the worst sorts of archaeocentrism you could find. So I won't comment there.
I do think there is enormous value in having some specialized departments (like yours) that really sell their uniqueness. Especially at the graduate level, I think it's good to have focused (but not too narrowly) programs. Of course, the thing is that 'archaeology' isn't your focus, nautical archaeology is. And I don't think that trying to make the nautical archaeologists be more anthropological is necessarily likely to be productive.
Are all of your biological anthropologists bioarchaeologists? In a lot of departments, bio is closer to medical, to ecological, etc. than it is to archaeology. This is one of my pet peeves - the four subfields get grouped into two, uh, semi-fields of bio+arch and cult+ling. Which is dumb.
Is there, or has there ever been, a movement to turn nautical archaeology into its own department? And if so, how do the non-nautical archaeologists feel about that? I think it is possible that this is actually a way of appeasing the nautical archaeologists by keeping them in the fold rather than going their own way entirely.
So I do think this might be about nautical archaeologists (who, let's face it, aren't anthropological for the most part) clamoring for a little name recognition at the departmental level, and not much more than that. But I don't know enough about your departmental politics to say whether that's true.
no subject
I do think there is enormous value in having some specialized departments (like yours) that really sell their uniqueness. Especially at the graduate level, I think it's good to have focused (but not too narrowly) programs. Of course, the thing is that 'archaeology' isn't your focus, nautical archaeology is. And I don't think that trying to make the nautical archaeologists be more anthropological is necessarily likely to be productive.
Are all of your biological anthropologists bioarchaeologists? In a lot of departments, bio is closer to medical, to ecological, etc. than it is to archaeology. This is one of my pet peeves - the four subfields get grouped into two, uh, semi-fields of bio+arch and cult+ling. Which is dumb.
Is there, or has there ever been, a movement to turn nautical archaeology into its own department? And if so, how do the non-nautical archaeologists feel about that? I think it is possible that this is actually a way of appeasing the nautical archaeologists by keeping them in the fold rather than going their own way entirely.
So I do think this might be about nautical archaeologists (who, let's face it, aren't anthropological for the most part) clamoring for a little name recognition at the departmental level, and not much more than that. But I don't know enough about your departmental politics to say whether that's true.