Archaeology and History as Companion Disciplines

Co-analysing Georg Sarauw’s Work on the Mullerup Excavation at the Start of the 1900s

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the practice-history of archaeology, a less scrutinized subject. We join this field of historiography with some preliminary results of how an archaeologist and a historian can read archive material together. Sources are material produced by Georg Sarauw during his process of interpreting Mullerup. Our analyses take up Sarauw’s practices in the interpretation process, as well as problematizing our own mutual practices. The term companion disciplines approach is used to describe our cooperation and is adapted from Donna Haraway’s attitude to relationships between differently situated subjects. Our focus on methodology aims to find examples of how and where two or more academic disciplines are operative together when they aim to produce mutual results.