The synergy between anthropology and history in the interdiscipline of ethnohistory has been productive in stretching the methods and reciprocal pre-occupations of both disciplines. Archival history may be considered as a field site for the anthropologist as situated participant-observer. Alternatively, fieldwork in contemporary societies may be contextualized in local history using the methods and sources of the traditional historian. Anthropologists characteristically rely heavily on oral history, narrative, and life history to supplement written documentary records. Increasingly, they also extend the time depth of their analyses through community collaboration and consensus about local understandings of history. Such local understandings, often incorporating cosmology and myth-time, challenge the presumptive universality of the concept of “history” in ways that can only enrich the practice of ethnohistory.
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