They might? I'm not actually sure how these things happen. If I had to guess, I'd say that judging from what the AAA is doing they want to kick out the physical anthropologists (and probably by extension the archaeologists, who've been arguing for a long time that anthropology should be a science). Maybe that will mean closer contact between archy and phys. anth as they break off into their own thing, or maybe they'll get subsumed by some other science (biology seems like a good bet for phys. anth, but I really have no idea who could take in archaeology!).
It probably won't really matter except in terms of departmental squabbles and the structure and inclusion of groups in academic journals and conventions. That could lead to some groups having to make their own conventions and journals in order to get published, and it could lead to funding problems at various universities if the departmental stuff doesn't work out in a good way, but that happens. For an example, folklore and mythology didn't exist as departments at my university, and they were subsumed in the departments of Scandinavian studies and Classical (as well as Far East, Scandinavian, Near East, and American Indian) studies respectively. It got confusing sometimes, and it meant that people like me with an obsession with mythology in general had to hop around a lot, but it was okay. I suppose it's possible we could end up with the same kind of thing for archaeology. It's possible you could have to go to different departments for each region if you wanted to study archy, rather than going to the general department. That could lead to confusion, but probably no less than, for instance, the natural focuses that a given university's archaeology department gets based on where their professors did their work.
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Date: 2010-12-08 12:24 am (UTC)They might? I'm not actually sure how these things happen. If I had to guess, I'd say that judging from what the AAA is doing they want to kick out the physical anthropologists (and probably by extension the archaeologists, who've been arguing for a long time that anthropology should be a science). Maybe that will mean closer contact between archy and phys. anth as they break off into their own thing, or maybe they'll get subsumed by some other science (biology seems like a good bet for phys. anth, but I really have no idea who could take in archaeology!).
It probably won't really matter except in terms of departmental squabbles and the structure and inclusion of groups in academic journals and conventions. That could lead to some groups having to make their own conventions and journals in order to get published, and it could lead to funding problems at various universities if the departmental stuff doesn't work out in a good way, but that happens. For an example, folklore and mythology didn't exist as departments at my university, and they were subsumed in the departments of Scandinavian studies and Classical (as well as Far East, Scandinavian, Near East, and American Indian) studies respectively. It got confusing sometimes, and it meant that people like me with an obsession with mythology in general had to hop around a lot, but it was okay. I suppose it's possible we could end up with the same kind of thing for archaeology. It's possible you could have to go to different departments for each region if you wanted to study archy, rather than going to the general department. That could lead to confusion, but probably no less than, for instance, the natural focuses that a given university's archaeology department gets based on where their professors did their work.