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Date: | Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:06:04 -0700 |
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Artifact classification is hardly new to archaeology…
New From Left Coast Press, Inc. A 15% discount on web orders at
www.LCoastPress.com.
Artifact Classification: A Conceptual and Methodological Approach
Dwight W. Read
Published October 2007, 240 pages, $59.00 cloth
Achieving the goals of archaeology as a scientific discipline aimed at
explicating our complex interactions – both with the material world and our
culturally constructed social world – depends on our ability to uncover the
dimensions along which material objects are constructed, thereby giving us
insights into what the technological, social, and cultural aspects of the
material objects uncovered by the archaeologist can reveal about past
societies.
Artifact classification is hardly new to archaeology. Archaeologists have
been developing artifact typologies to understand cultural categories for as
long as the discipline has existed. Dwight Read examines these attempts to
systematize the cultural domains in premodern societies through a historical
study of pottery typologies. He then offers a methodology for producing
classifications that are both salient to the cultural groups that produced
them and relevant for establishing cultural categories and timelines for the
archaeologist attempting to understand the relationship between material
culture and ideational culture of ancient societies.
The book concludes with the comment:
"The analyses presented [in this book] ... illustrate how we can
distinguish groupings reflecting the artisan's decision and production
processes. These groupings and their inferred cultural types can serve as a
firm basis for additional and more extensive research aimed at understanding
and explicating the processes-both diachronic and synchronic-that structured
the material remains of past human societies."
To order, visit our website at:
http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=77
ISBN: 978-1-59874-102-5 (c)
PRICE:
$59.00 (U.S.), $72.00 (Canadian), £52.99 (Cloth)
For more information, contact Caryn Berg at [log in to unmask]
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