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The term was borrowed from the middle-range theory in sociology by Lewis Binford. [2] [3] He conducted ethnographic fieldwork amongst modern hunter-gatherer peoples such as the Nunamiut Eskimo, the Navajo, and Aboriginal Australians in order to understand the pattern of waste their activities generated.
A middle range theory could describe any cultural system outside of its specific cultural context, for example, the archaeology of agriculture. An upper range theory can explain any cultural system, independent of any specifics and regardless of the nature of the variables [clarification needed]. At the time Binford thought the middle range ...
Lewis Roberts Binford (November 21, 1931 – April 11, 2011) was an American archaeologist known for his influential work in archaeological theory, ethnoarchaeology and the Paleolithic period.
Middle-range theory has also been applied to the archaeological realm by Lewis R. Binford, and to financial theory by Robert C. Merton, [8] Robert K. Merton's son. In the recent decades, the analytical sociology programme has emerged as an attempt synthesizing middle-range theories into a more coherent abstract framework (as Merton had hoped ...
Middle-range theory can refer to theories in: Middle-range theory (archaeology) , describes how people use objects and structures, and the human behaviors associated with this use Middle-range theory (sociology) , a theory with limited scope, that explains a specific set of phenomena
Lewis Binford developed the middle range theory. Under this theory, researchers study the relationship between humans and the environment, which can be depicted in models. Cathy Whitlock, an Earth Scientist and Professor at Montana State University, specializing in Quaternary environmental change and palaeoclimatology.
Binford wanted to prove that the Mousterian assemblage, a group of stone artifacts from France during the ice age, was adapted to its environment. To prove this, Binford spent time with the Nunamiut of Alaska, a people living in conditions very similar to those of France during the period in question. Binford was successful with this approach ...
Parallel developments soon followed in the United States. Initially post-processualism was primarily a reaction to and critique of processual archaeology, a paradigm developed in the 1960s by 'New Archaeologists' such as Lewis Binford, and which had become dominant in Anglophone