Debating Archaeology

Book excerpt: In this volume, the founder of processual archaeology, Lewis R. Binford collects and comments on the twenty-eight substantive papers published in the 1980's, the third in his set of collected papers (also Working at Archaeology and An Archaeological Perspective). This ongoing collection of self-edited papers, together with the extensive and very candid interstitial commentaries, provides an invaluable record of the development of "The New Archaeology" and a challenging view into the mind of the man who is certainly the most creative archaeological theorist of our time. A new (2009) foreword allows further reflections on his work.