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Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with ...
Processual archaeology (formerly, the New Archaeology) is a form of archaeological theory. It had its beginnings in 1958 with the work of Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips, Method and Theory in American Archaeology, in which the pair stated that "American archaeology is anthropology, or it is nothing" (Willey and Phillips, 1958:2), a rephrasing ...
Archaeology. Excavations at Atapuerca, an archaeological site in Spain. Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a ...
Post-processual archaeology, which is sometimes alternatively referred to as the interpretative archaeologies by its adherents, [1][2] is a movement in archaeological theory that emphasizes the subjectivity of archaeological interpretations. Despite having a vague series of similarities, post-processualism consists of "very diverse strands of ...
The philosophy of archaeology is also concerned with the construction of theories within the discipline. Archaeology is a theoretically fragmented field with no generally applied interpretative theory underpinning the discipline. A multitude of different theoretical approaches have developed over the last 50 years and exist in parallel across ...
Behavioural archaeology is an archaeological theory that expands upon the nature and aims of archaeology in regards to human behaviour and material culture. [1] The theory was first published in 1975 by American archaeologist Michael B. Schiffer and his colleagues J. Jefferson Reid, and William L. Rathje. [1]
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture. It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural evolutionism began to fall out of favor with many antiquarians and archaeologists.
Marxist archaeology is an archaeological theory that interprets archaeological information using the framework of dialectical materialism, which is often short-handed as Marxism. Although neither Karl Marx nor Friedrich Engels specifically analyzed how archaeology supported a materialist conception of history, Marx indicated as much in Capital ...