In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record

By Lewis Roberts Binford

Book Overview

Many consider Lewis Binford to be the single most influential figure in archaeology in the last half-century. His contributions to the "New Archaeology" changed the course of the field as he argued for the development of a scientifically rigorous framework to guide the excavation and interpretation of the archaeological record. In this book, first published nearly two decades ago, Binford provided students and general readers with an introduction to his challenging and provocative ideas about understanding the human past. Now available again, this important component of Binford's intellectual legacy will convey the drama and intellectual excitement of contemporary archaeology to a new generation of archaeologists and others interested in the field. Throughout the book, Binford questions old ideas and proposes new theories based on his comparative archaeological and ethnographic research in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia. A new afterword by Binford surveys the direction archaeology has taken since the publication of this book and shares his hopes for the future of the discipline.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520233395
• ISBN13: 9780520233393
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining

An entertaining, even relaxed and conversational, read. It recovers some the intellectual history of archaeological theory, albeit not in the most unbiased manner. The most attractive quality of the book remains its ease of reading, it reads just like a fascinating lecture, which, in fact, it was. The book can easily be read over the course of a weekend, or an especially long plane ride. What one will get from the volume depends greatly on what one brings to the volume. The best portion stands as the superlative and unsurpassed ethnoarchaeological work in Northern Alaska, the worst as a very weak discussion of sociocultural evolution. Still, warts and all, it's a valuable read to anyone vaguely interested in archaeology or in the evolutionary development of human culture, which may or may not be an adaptive system relative to its environment.