Full Description
Archeology shares with other anthropological sciences the goal of explaining differences and similarities among cultural systems. Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford, therefore are concerned with theory and arguments which treat problems of the interrelationship of cultural variables with explanatory value. Archeology in Cultural Systems is devoted to four different aspects of archeology.
This book progresses from theoretical-methodological discussions to specific consideration of archeological materials. It focuses on the analysis of archeological remains from a single site. Its concern is primarily with recognizing, measuring and explaining variability in the form and distribution of a site's cultural remains. The authors argue that internal variability derives from the composition and distribution of societal segments represented at the site. The work then shifts to study of archeological components (or their attributes) and seeks explanations for observed differences and similarities. A final section of the volume comments and discusses materials in the volume.
Archeology in Cultural Systems is not a monolithic presentation of any particular school of archeological thought. There are common interests and many points of agreement among the authors, but there is also diversity of opinion on several points. These points are the focus of research here.
Contents
I: Archeological Theory and Method; 1: Archeological Perspectives; 2: Explanation in Archeology; 3: The Inference of Residence and Descent Rules from Archeological Data; 4: Variability and Change in the Near Eastern Mousterian of Levallois Facies; 5: Method and Theory of Upper Paleolithic Archeology in Southwestern France; II: Investigating Variability in the Archeological Record: A Single Occupation Unit; 6: Some Aspects of Prehistoric Society in East-Central Arizona; 7: Broken K Pueblo: Patterns of Form and Function; 8: Computer Analysis of Archeological Data from Teotihuacan, Mexico; 9: Archeological Lessons from an Apache Wickiup; 10: Establishing Cultural Heterogeneities in Settlement Patterns: An Ethnographic Example; III: Investigating Variability in the Archeological Record: Variability among Occupational Units; 11: Value Systems and Trade Cycles of the Late Archaic in the Midwest; 12: Investigations of Late Prehistoric Social Organization in New York State; 13: Evidence of Social Organization from Western Iran, 8000-4000 b . c .; 14: Social and Economic Systems in Normative Mesoamerica; 15: Woodland Subsistence-Settlement Systems in the Lower Illinois Valley; 16: Post-Pleistocene Adaptations; IV: Discussion
