Download or read book The Direct Historical Approach in American Archaeology written by Alexander Henderson Morrison and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Measuring Time with Artifacts written by R. Lee Lyman and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining historical research with a lucid explication of archaeological methodology and reasoning, Measuring Time with Artifacts examines the origins and changing use of fundamental chronometric techniques and procedures and analyzes the different ways American archaeologists have studied changes in artifacts, sites, and peoples over time. In highlighting the underpinning ontology and epistemology of artifact-based chronometers?cultural transmission and how to measure it archaeologically?this volume covers issues such as why archaeologists used the cultural evolutionism of L. H. Morgan, E. B. Tylor, L. A. White, and others instead of biological evolutionism; why artifact classification played a critical role in the adoption of stratigraphic excavation; how the direct historical approach accomplished three analytical tasks at once; why cultural traits were important analytical units; why paleontological and archaeological methods sometimes mirror one another; how artifact classification influences chronometric method; and how graphs illustrate change in artifacts over time. An understanding of the history of artifact-based chronometers enables us to understand how we know what we think we know about the past, ensures against modern misapplication of the methods, and sheds light on the reasoning behind archaeologists' actions during the first half of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Pioneers in Historical Archaeology written by Stanley South and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique volume, twelve pioneers of historical archaeology offer reminiscences of the early part of their respective careers, circa 1920 to 1940. Each scholar had to overcome numerous biases held by historians and archaeologists-thus each chapter documents a step in the field's march from a marginal to a mainstream discipline. The book makes for facinating reading for archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians of science, and reminds us of the words of C.H. Fairbanks: ''what is past is prelude; study the past. ''
Download or read book Critical Approaches to Fieldwork written by Gavin Lucas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work takes as its starting point the role of fieldwork and how this has changed over the past 150 years. The author argues against progressive accounts of fieldwork and instead places it in its broader intellectual context to critically examine the relationship between theoretical paradigms and everyday archaeological practice. In providing a much-needed historical and critical evaluation of current practice in archaeology, this book opens up a topic of debate which affects all archaeologists, whatever their particular interests.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology written by Barbara Mills and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with many of the best-studied examples of hunter-gatherer and village-based societies. Research has been carried out in the region for well over a century, and during this time the Southwest has repeatedly stood at the forefront of the development of new archaeological methods and theories. Moreover, research in the Southwest has long been a key site of collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, linguists, biological anthropologists, and indigenous intellectuals. This volume marks the most ambitious effort to take stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of the American Southwest. Over seventy top scholars have joined forces to produce an unparalleled survey of state of archaeological knowledge in the region. Themed chapters on particular methods and theories are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of the culture histories of particular archaeological sequences, from the initial Paleoindian occupation, to the rise of a major ritual center in Chaco Canyon, to the onset of the Spanish and American imperial projects. The result is an essential volume for any researcher working in the region as well as any archaeologist looking to take the pulse of contemporary trends in this key research tradition.
Download or read book Setting the Agenda for American Archaeology written by Michael J. O'Brien and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2001-08-09 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection elucidates the key role played by the National Research Council seminars, reports, and pamphlets in setting an agenda that has guided American archaeology in the 20th century.
Download or read book International Handbook of Historical Archaeology written by Teresita Majewski and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-07 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In studying the past, archaeologists have focused on the material remains of our ancestors. Prehistorians generally have only artifacts to study and rely on the diverse material record for their understanding of past societies and their behavior. Those involved in studying historically documented cultures not only have extensive material remains but also contemporary texts, images, and a range of investigative technologies to enable them to build a broader and more reflexive picture of how past societies, communities, and individuals operated and behaved. Increasingly, historical archaeology refers not to a particular period, place, or a method, but rather an approach that interrogates the tensions between artifacts and texts irrespective of context. In short, historical archaeology provides direct evidence for how humans have shaped the world we live in today. Historical archaeology is a branch of global archaeology that has grown in the last 40 years from its North American base into an increasingly global community of archaeologists each studying their area of the world in a historical context. Where historical archaeology started as part of the study of the post-Columbian societies of the United States and Canada, it has now expanded to interface with the post-medieval archaeologies of Europe and the diverse post-imperial experiences of Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The 36 essays in the International Handbook of Historical Archaeology have been specially commissioned from the leading researchers in their fields, creating a wide-ranging digest of the increasingly global field of historical archaeology. The volume is divided into two sections, the first reviewing the key themes, issues, and approaches of historical archaeology today, and the second containing a series of case studies charting the development and current state of historical archaeological practice around the world. This key reference work captures the energy and diversity of this global discipline today.
Download or read book Method and Theory in American Archaeology written by Gordon R. Willey, Philip Phillips and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Artifacts and Ideas written by Bruce Trigger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prehistoric archaeologists cannot observe their human subjects nor can they directly access their subjects' ideas. Both must be inferred from the remnants of the material objects they made and used. In recent decades this incontrovertible fact has encouraged partisan approaches to the history and method of archaeology. An empirical discipline emphasizing data, classification, and chronology has given way to a behaviorist approach that interprets finds as products of ecologically adaptive strategies, and to a postmodern alternative that relies on an idealist, cultural-relativist epistemology based on belief and cultural traditions. In Artifacts and Ideas, Bruce G. Trigger challenges all partisan versions of recent developments in archaeology, while remaining committed to understanding the past from a social science perspective. Over 30 years, Trigger has addressed fundamental epistemological issues, and opposed the influence of narrow theoretical and ideological commitments on archaeological interpretation since the 1960s. Trigger encourages a relativistic understanding of archaeological interpretation. Yet as post-processual archaeology, influenced by postmodernism, became increasingly influential, Trigger countered nihilistic subjectivism by laying greater emphasis on how in the long run the constraints of evidence could be expected to produce a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the past. In recent years Trigger has argued that while all human behavior is culturally mediated, the capacity for such mediation has evolved as a flexible and highly efficient means by which humans adapt to a world that exists independently of their will. Trigger agrees that a complete understanding of what has shaped the archaeological record requires knowledge both of past beliefs and of human behavior. He knows also that one must understand humans as organisms with biologically grounded drives, emotions, and means of understanding. Likewise, even in the absence of data supplied in a linguistic format by texts and oral traditions, at least some of the more ecologically adaptive forms of human behavior and some general patterns of belief that display cross-cultural uniformity will be susceptible to archaeological analysis.Advocating a realist epistemology and a materialist ontology, Artifacts and Ideas offers an illuminating guide to the present state of the discipline as well as to how archaeology can best achieve its goals.
Download or read book Historical Archaeology written by Charles E. Orser, Jr. and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-05 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a short, readable introduction to historical archaeology, which focuses on modern history in all its fascinating regional, cultural, and ethnic diversity. Accessibly covering key methods and concepts, including fundamental theories and principles, the history of the field, and basic definitions, Historical Archaeology also includes a practical look at career prospects for interested readers. Orser discusses central topics of archaeological research such as time and space, survey and excavation methods, and analytical techniques, encouraging readers to consider the possible meanings of artifacts. Drawing on the author’s extensive experience as an historical archaeologist, the book’s perspective ranges from the local to the global in order to demonstrate the real importance of this subject to our understanding of the world in which we live today. The third edition of this popular textbook has been significantly revised and expanded to reflect recent developments and discoveries in this exciting area of study. Each chapter includes updated case studies which demonstrate the research conducted by professional historical archaeologists. With its engaging approach to the subject, Historical Archaeology continues to be an ideal resource for readers who wish to be introduced to this rapidly expanding global field.
Download or read book Archaeological Thinking written by Charles E. Orser and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second edition of Archaeological Thinking, Charles E. Orser, Jr. provides an updated guide to the critical thinking skills archaeologists use to unravel the stories of history’s buried past.
Download or read book A History of Archaeological Thought written by Bruce G. Trigger and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruce Trigger's new book is the first ever to examine the history of archaeology from medieval times to the present in world-wide perspective. At once stimulating and even-handed, it places the development of archaeological thought and theory throughout within a broad social and intellectual framework. The successive but interacting trends apparent in archaeological thought are defined and the author seeks to determine the extent to which these trends were a reflection of the personal and collective interests of archaeologists as these relate - in the West at least - to the fluctuating fortunes of the middle classes. While subjective influences have been powerful, Professor Trigger argues that the gradual accumulation of archaeological data has exercised a growing constraint on interpretation. In turn, this has increased the objectivity of archaeological research and enhanced its value for understanding the entire span of human history and the human condition in general.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Culture History written by R. Lee Lyman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1997-06-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents an insightful critical analysis of the culture history approach to Americanist anthropology. Reasons for the acceptance and incorporation of important concepts, as well as the paradigm's strengths and weaknesses, are discussed in detail. The framework for this analysis is founded on the contrast between two metaphysics used by evolutionary biologists in discussing their own discipline: materialistic/populational thinking and essentialistic/typological thinking. Employing this framework, the authors show not only why the culture history paradigm lost favor in the 1960s, but also which of its aspects need to be retained if archaeology is ever to produce a viable theory of culture change.
Download or read book The Direct historical Approach in California Archaeology written by Robert Fleming Heizer and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In the Beginning written by Brian M. Fagan and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1994 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text begins with a summary of the history of the subject and then provides an overview of the objectives and processes of archaeological research and the basic principles of culture, context and dating methods.
Download or read book Essays in the History of Plains Archeology written by Waldo Rudolph Wedel and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Antiquity written by and published by . This book was released on 1942 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the section "Book reviews."
