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Theory, Method, and Practice in Modern Archaeology
Robert J. Jeske, ed., Douglas K. Charles, ed.
ISBN: 0-89789-748-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-89789-748-8
408 pages
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 3/30/2003
List Price: $91.95 (UK Sterling Price: £63.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Description: This book presents 18 essays by leading scholars covering mortuary analysis, the archaeology of foraging and agricultural societies, cultural evolution, and archaeological method and theory, which transcend the processual/postprocessual debate in archaeology and provide examples of how archaeologists think about, and go about, studying the past.

As archaeology encounters the 21st century, debate over the nature of the discipline dominates professional discourse. Archaeologists are embattled over isms: processualism, postprocessualism, scientism, and humanism are ubiquitous buzzwords in the literature. Yet archaeology is a craft practiced by individuals, learned from and influenced by other individuals. Sometimes a peson, through sheer force of intellectual spirit, rises above the debate to make a mark on the field in ways that cross out schools, paradigms, and factions.

It is fitting to look back at the influence one such individual has had on archaeological methods, theory, data collection, and syntheses over the last half century. This volume draws on the experience of students and colleagues who worked with and were strongly influenced by James A. Brown's approach to the past. The volume is divided into five categories, each reflecting one distinctive facet of Brown's affect on archaeology: mortuary analysis, foraging and horticultural societies, complex agriculturalists, proto-historic and historic societies, and method and theory. These diverse categories, with articles by archaeologists of many backgrounds, are drawn together by the threads of Brown's intellectual legacy. Not all authors here are in agreement with Brown's views on their subjects, but all acknolwedge that his work in the area sets a standard that needs to be met if one is to succeed.
Table of Contents:
  • Mortuary Studies
    Practice and Record: Mortuary Analysis and Archaeological theory by Robert Chapman
    Making Sense of Mortuary Practices? Chinchorro Mummies and the Archaic Period on the South-Central Andean Coast by Karen Wise
    The Chiribaya and the Emergence of Inequality: A Bioarchaeological Case Study by Jane E. Buikstra, Maria Cecilia Lozada Carna, and Paula Tomczak
    Foraging and Horticultural Societies
    Complex Foragers? by T. Douglas Price
    Koster Research and the Archaic by David L. Carlson
    Chronological Relationships Among Ohio Hopewell Sites by N'omi B. Greber
    Rethinking Hopewell: Consideration of Politics, Economics, and Gender by Douglas K. Charles
    Mississippian Societies
    Distinctions Among High and Low Status People at Cathokia by George R. Milner
    Mississippian Period Warfare and Palisade Construction at Cathokia by Mary Beth Trubitt
    Strangers in Paradise or Ethnic Mortuary Variation at the Fringe of Cahokia? by Thomas E. Emerson and Eve Hargrave
    Painted Maces and Shell Cups: The Scientific Use of Artifacts Without Context by April Kay Sievert
    Upper Mississippian and Historic Societies
    An Interpretation of Late Prehistoric Cultural Developments in the Eastern Ozarks by Mark J. Laynott
    Temporal, Spatial, and Social Trends: Late Prehistoric and Proto-Historic Group Interaction by M. Catherine Bird
    Lithic Procurement and Use within Mississippian Social Networks by Robert J. Jeske
    Rethinking Jean Nicolet's Route to the Winnebago in 1634 by Robert L. Hall
    Agricultural Places and the Oneota Lifeway in Wisconsin by Robert F. Sasso
    Methods and Theory
    Sacred Sites and Profane Conflicts: The Use of Burial Facilities and Other Sacred Locations as Territorial Markers--Ethnographic Evidence by Lawrence A. Kuznar
    Like Everywhere You've Never Been: Strange Archaelogical Tales from Papua New Guinea by Robin Torrence
    Archaelogical Research, and Graduate Training by Lynne Goldstein
    References Cited
About the Author: ROBERT J. JESKE is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and is Director of the Archaeological Research Laboratory.

DOUGLAS K. CHARLES is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Wesleyan University.
LCC Class: 930
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