ANTH 9 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Processual Archaeology, Prehistoric Europe, David Korten

• School: Irvine Valley College
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANTH 9
• Professor: Clifford

Document Summary

Mid-20th century realization that archeologists could be more than documents about when and where particular artifacts were used. Particularly in the united states, this approach focused of the adaptive significance of human behavior: culture is the primary means of human adaptation. V. gordon childe (1890-1957: concerned with how people lived, not just artifacts and architecture, emphasized past economies in his coverage of prehistoric europe and the near. East: maintained that cultural stages should be classified according to how people lived, identifies two great turning points in human existence, neolithic revolution, urban revolution. In the 1960s, more attention began to be directed toward the conditions that promoted cultural change: how and why particular cultures came into being. Artifacts and archaeology are systematically related to economies, social organization, and the like: much more can be learned about past peoples from the kinds of things they used. Lewis r. binford was a leading advocate of the new approach.