Understanding the archaeological record

Abstract

Next year will mark the twentieth birthday of the ‘New Archaeology’, whose founding texts – Binford & Binford's New perspectives in archaeology in the USA and Clarke's Analytical archaeologyin Britain – both appeared in 1968. Nearly two decades on, some fundamentals are not yet resolved, which may indicate – as Lester Embree argued in the last number of ANTIQUITY – that archaeology is a harder science than most.