A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
This invaluable classic provides the framework for the development of American archaeology during the last half of the 20th century.
In 1958 Gordon R. Willey and Philip Phillips first published Method and Theory in American Archaeology—a volume that went through five printings, the last in 1967 at the height of what became known as the new, or processual, archaeology. The advent of processual archaeology, according to Willey and Phillips, represented a "theoretical debate . . . a question of whether archaeology should be the study of cultural history or the study of cultural process."
Willey and Phillips suggested that little interpretation had taken place in American archaeology, and their book offered an analytical perspective; the methods they described and the structural framework they used for synthesizing American prehistory were all geared toward interpretation. Method and Theory served as the catalyst and primary reader on the topic for over a decade.
This facsimile reprint edition of the original University of Chicago Press volume includes a new foreword by Gordon R. Willey, which outlines the state of American archaeology at the time of the original publication, and a new introduction by the editors to place the book in historical context. The bibliography is exhaustive. Academic libraries, students, professionals, and knowledgeable amateurs will welcome this new edition of a standard-maker among texts on American archaeology.
The Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma was the richest source of pre-Columbian shell engravings in North America, a treasury of early native American artistry. From about 1250 AD until the early part of this century, it remained virtually undisturbed, but in 1933, it was plundered by commercial diggers. The fragments of the shell cups and gorgets became widely scattered, as museums and private collectors sought to acquire them. It is only through the publication of this work that the pieces have been put back together.
These lavishly illustrated volumes showcase the variety of iconography and of the engravers.
Unequaled in North America as a single source of prehistoric figurative and decorative art, the Craig burial mound was plundered by commercial diggers in 1933. Hundreds of fragile shell artifacts covered with engraved designs were quickly sold and, whole or fragmented, were scattered in public and private collections across the country.
For the past ten years, Dr. Philip Phillips, Honorary Curator of Southeastern Archaeology at Harvard, has supervised a massive project that has involved making rubbings and line drawings of this whole corpus of Southeastern Indian art, matching hundreds of fragments, and classifying the engraved designs by schools.
Volume VI, the last volume of the set, deals with the final phase of the Craig style, then concludes with a summary of the study, a bibliography, and an extensive index.
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