How much, in your opnion, does history encompass? Archaeology? Genetics? Prehistory? Astrophysics? Does the term "pre-history" exclude itself from history?

by myrichiehaynes

I presuppose there are opnions on all sides of this, but since historians can generally use imagery, art, and artifacts to tell history - it seems that history is not limited to the written word, right? How far does it go?

ColCrabs

I’m an archaeologist so I can’t speak for the historical side of things but I can at least provide my views on the division.

I don’t think encompassing is the right word as History is on a different level from the disciplines you mentioned. I see it as the difference between basic and applied disciplines.

Archaeology (should be) a basic science, one that collects data and material to be used by a range of other discipline like anthropology or history. History on the other hand is applied or an interpretive discipline which takes the materials from other fields and applies them to their research. Reaching out and grabbing genetic results, archaeological findings, etc. to interpret and develop into history.

It all gets a bit iffy though because, for the most part, science and whatever we want to call history and archaeology, are not clearly structured and the definitions I used change depending on the field you look at.