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  3. New Directions in Archaeology

The books in this long established series treat issues at the cutting edge of archaeological theory and method. Archaeological research and thinking has been transformed in recent years, often through contact with other disciplines in the human and environmental sciences, and students and professional scholars alike have welcomed the critical reviews of new directions in archaeological thought which these books provide. Each volume carries an editorial overview, followed by expert case studies, and includes an extensive bibliography.

  • General Editors: Wendy Ashmore, University of Pennsylvania, Françoise Audouze, Centre de Recherches Archéologiques, Meudon, France, Cyprian Broodbank, University College London, Tim Murray, La Trobe University, Victoria, Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge, Nathan Schlanger, Andrew Sherratt, Department of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Timothy Taylor, University of Bradford, Norman Yoffee, University of Michigan

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10 results in New Directions in Archaeology

Ideology, Power and Prehistory
  • Daniel Miller, Christopher Tilley
  • Published online:
    05 March 2012
    Print publication:
    03 May 1984
  • This book starts from the premise that methodology - the procedures for obtaining an 'objective' knowledge of the past - has always dominated archaeology to the detriment of broader social theory. It argues that social theory is archaeological theory, and that past failure to recognise this has resulted in disembodied archaeological theory and weak disciplinary practice. Ideology, Power and Prehistory therefore seeks to reinstate the primacy of social theory and the social nature of the past worlds that archaeologists seek to understand. The contributors to this book argue that past peoples, the creators of the archaeological records, should be understood as actively manipulating their own material world to represent and misrepresent their own and others' interests. Thus the concepts of ideology and power, long discussed in social and political science yet largely ignored by archaeologists, must henceforward play a central role in our understanding of the past as a social creation. Archaeologists must now consider how the material remains they study were used to create images by past societies, which do not simply mirror or reflect but actively orientate the nature of these societies.

Prehistoric Quarries and Lithic Production
  • Jonathon E. Ericson, Barbara A. Purdy
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 July 1984
  • This book was originally published in 1984. For over a million years rocks provided human beings with the essential raw materials for the production of tools. Nevertheless we still know very little about the behaviour and processes that resulted in the creation of archaeological sites at or near lithic quarries. In the past archaeologists have placed much emphasis on the process of 'exchange' in their analysis of prehistoric economies while largely ignoring the sources of the exchanged objects. However, with the development of interest in the means of production, these sites have begun to take on a new significance. Prehistoric Quarries and Lithic Production is the first systematic study of archaeological sites that served as quarries for stone tools. Its theoretical and methodological importance will extend its appeal beyond those archaeologists concerned with lithic technology and prehistoric exchange systems to archaeologists and anthropologists in general and to geographers and geologists.

Archaeology, Annales, and Ethnohistory
  • Edited by A. Bernard Knapp
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    16 April 1992
  • This collection considers the relevance of the Annales 'school' for archaeology. The Annales movement regarded orthodox history as too much concerned with events, too narrowly political, too narrative in form and too isolated from neighbouring disciplines. Annalistes attempted to construct a 'total' history, dealing with a wide range of human activity, and combining divergent material, documentary, and theoretical approaches to the past. Annales-oriented research utilizes the techniques and tools of various ancillary fields, and integrates temporal, spatial, material and behavioural analyses. Such an approach is obviously attractive to archaeologists, for even though they deal with material data rather than social facts, they are just as much as historians interested in understanding social, economic and political factors such as power and dominance, conflict, exchange and other human activities. Three introductory essays consider the relationship between Annales methodology and current archaeological theory. Case studies draw upon methodological variations of the multifaceted Annales approach. The volume concludes with two overviews, one historical and the other archaeological.

The Abandonment of Settlements and Regions
  • Ethnoarchaeological and Archaeological Approaches
  • Catherine M. Cameron, Steve A. Tomka
  • Published online:
    23 May 2010
    Print publication:
    08 July 1993
  • All archaeological sites have been abandoned, but people abandoned sites in many different ways, and for different reasons. What they did when leaving a settlement, structure, or activity area had a direct effect on the kind and quality of the cultural remains entering the archaeological record - for example, whether tools were removed, destroyed, or buried in the ground, and building structures dismantled or left standing. This book examines abandonment as a stage in the formation of an archaeological site, and relies on ethnoarchaelogical and archaeological data from many areas of the world - North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Near East. It documents the many complex factors surrounding abandonment both across entire regions and within settlement areas, and makes an important theoretical and methodological contribution to this area of archaeological investigation.

Archaeological Theory
  • Who Sets the Agenda?
  • Edited by Norman Yoffee, Andrew Sherratt
  • Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    22 July 1993
  • This volume assesses the real achievements of archaeology in increasing an understanding of the past. Without rejecting the insights either of traditional or more recent approaches, it considers the issues raised in current claims and controversies about what is appropriate theory for archaeology. The first section looks at the process of theory building and at the sources of the ideas employed. The following studies examine questions such as the interplay between expectation and evidence in ideas of human origins, social role and material practice in the formation of the archaeological record, and how the rise of states should be conceptualised; further papers cover issues of ethnoarchaeology, visual symbols, and conflicting claims to ownership of the past. The conclusion is that archaeologists need to be equally wary of naive positivism in the guise of scientific procedure, and of speculation about the unrecorded intentions of prehistoric actors.

Symbolic and Structural Archaeology
  • Edited by Ian Hodder
  • Published online:
    27 February 2010
    Print publication:
    12 August 1982
  • This volume presents a searching critique of the more traditional archaeological methodologies and interpretation strategies and lays down a firm philosophical and theoretical basis for symbolist and structuralist studies in archaeology. A variety of procedures, ranging from ethnoarchaeological studies and computing techniques to formal studies of artefact design variability, are utilized to provide models for archaeologists within the proposed framework and the theory and models are then applied to a range of archaeological analyses. This particular approach sees all human actions as being meaningfully constituted within a social and cultural framework. Material culture is not simply an adaptive tool, but is structured according to sets of underlying principles which give meaning to, and derive meanings from, the social world. Thus structural regularities are shown to link seemingly disparate aspects of material culture, from funerary monuments to artefact design, from the use of space in settlements, to the form of economic practices.

Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World
  • Edited by Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, John W. Fox
  • Published online:
    18 December 2009
    Print publication:
    27 January 1994
  • Factionalism is an important force of social transformation, and this volume examines how factional competition in the kinship and political structures in ancient New World societies led to the development of chiefdoms, states and empires. The case studies, from a range of New World societies, represent all levels of non-egalitarian societies and a wide variety of ecological settings in the New World. They document the effects of factionalism on the structure of particular polities: for example, how it might have led to the growth of social inequality, or to changing patterns of chiefly authority, or to state formation and expansion, or institutional specialisation. The work is a creative and substantial contribution to our understanding of the political dynamics in early state society, and will interest archaeologists, anthropologists, political scientists and historians.

The Ancient Mind
  • Elements of Cognitive Archaeology
  • Edited by Colin Renfrew, Ezra B. W. Zubrow
  • Published online:
    03 December 2009
    Print publication:
    26 May 1994
  • One of the most troubling problems in archaeology is to determine the manner and content of prehistoric thought. A fundamental challenge is to develop the theory, methodology and tools to understand human cognition. Cognitive archaeology as a subject is still in its infancy, and archaeologists are adopting a variety of approaches. One direction has been to develop an 'interpretationist', anti-scientific, literary approach. Another has been to use a linguistic framework and develop a hermeneutic, semiotic approach. A third approach develops a new direction in prehistoric cognitive research which is rooted in the scientific tradition and in an empirical methodology. It draws upon the cognitive, the mathematical and the computer sciences in an attempt to understand what techniques can be used appropriately on archaeological data, and how to implement them efficiently. This is the approach adopted by the contributors to The Ancient Mind. Together, they begin to develop a science of cognitive archaeology.

Bad Year Economics
  • Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty
  • Edited by Paul Halstead, John O'Shea
  • Published online:
    26 October 2009
    Print publication:
    29 September 1989
  • Bad Year Economics explores the role of risk and uncertainty in human economics within an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural framework. Drawing on archaeology, anthropology, and ancient and modern history, the contributors range widely in time and space across hunting, farming and pastoralism, across ancient states, empires, and modern nation states. The aim, however, is a common one: to analyse in each case the structure of variability - particularly with regard to food supply - and review the range of responses offered by individual human communities. These responses commonly exploit various forms of mobility, economic diversification, storage, and exchange to deploy local or temporary abundance as a defence against shortage. Different levels of response are used at different levels of risk. Their success is fundamental to human survival and their adoption has important ramifications throughout cultural behaviour.

Beyond Chiefdoms
  • Pathways to Complexity in Africa
  • Edited by Susan Keech McIntosh
  • Published online:
    14 October 2009
    Print publication:
    10 June 1999
  • Recent critiques of neoevolutionary formulations that focus primarily on the development of powerful hierarchies have called for broadening the empirical base for complex society studies. Redressing the neglect of sub-Saharan examples in comparative discussions on complex society, this book considers how case material from the region can enhance our understanding of the nature, origins and development of complexity. The archaeological, historical and anthropological case materials are relevant to a number of recent concerns, revealing how complexity has emerged and developed in a variety of ways. Contributors engage important theoretical issues, including the continuing influence of deeply embedded evolutionary notions in archaeological concepts of complexity, the importance of alternative modes of complex organization such as flexible hierarchies, multiple overlapping hierarchies, and horizontal differentiation, and the significance of different forms of power. The distinguished list of contributors include historians, archaeologists and anthropologists.