Method and Theory in American Archaeology

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

This invaluable classic provides the framework for the development of American archaeology during the last half of the 20th century.

In 1958 Gordon R. Willey and Philip Phillips first published Method and Theory in American Archaeologya volume that went through five printings, the last in 1967 at the height of what became known as the new, or processual, archaeology. The advent of processual archaeology, according to Willey and Phillips, represented a "theoretical debate . . . a question of whether archaeology should be the study of cultural history or the study of cultural process."

Willey and Phillips suggested that little interpretation had taken place in American archaeology, and their book offered an analytical perspective; the methods they described and the structural framework they used for synthesizing American prehistory were all geared toward interpretation. Method and Theory served as the catalyst and primary reader on the topic for over a decade.

This facsimile reprint edition of the original University of Chicago Press volume includes a new foreword by Gordon R. Willey, which outlines the state of American archaeology at the time of the original publication, and a new introduction by the editors to place the book in historical context. The bibliography is exhaustive. Academic libraries, students, professionals, and knowledgeable amateurs will welcome this new edition of a standard-maker among texts on American archaeology.

Gordon R. Willey is Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology Emeritus at Harvard University and author or editor of numerous books, includingNew World Archaeology and Culture History. Philip Phillips, who is deceased, authored or coauthored numerous books including the classicArchaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley 1940-1947. R. Lee Lyman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and edited, with Michael J. O'Brien,Measuring the Flow of Time: The Works of James A. Ford, 1935-1941. Michael J. O'Brien is Professor of Anthropology and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia. With Robert C. Dunnell, he editedChanging Perspectives on the Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley.