For centuries, the goal of archaeologists was to document and describe material artifacts, and at best to make inferences about the origins and evolution of human culture and about prehistoric and historic societies. During the 1960s, however, a number of young, primarily American archaeologists, including William Longacre, rebelled against this simplistic approach. Wanting to do more than just describe, Longacre and others believed that genuine explanations could be achieved by changing the direction, scope, and methodology of the field. What resulted was the New Archaeology, which blended scientific method and anthropology. It urged those working in the field to formulate hypotheses, derive conclusions deductively and, most important, to test them. While, over time the New Archaeology has had its critics, one point remains irrefutable: archaeology will never return to what has since been called its “state of innocence.”

In this collection of twelve new chapters, four generations of Longacre protégés show how they are building upon and developing but also modifying the theoretical paradigm that remains at the core of Americanist archaeology. The contributions focus on six themes prominent in Longacre’s career: the intellectual history of the field in the late twentieth century, archaeological methodology, analogical inference, ethnoarchaeology, cultural evolution, and reconstructing ancient society.

More than a comprehensive overview of the ideas developed by one of the most influential scholars in the field, however, Archaeological Anthropology makes stimulating contributions to contemporary research. The contributors do not unequivocally endorse Longacre’s ideas; they challenge them and expand beyond them, making this volume a fitting tribute to a man whose robust research and teaching career continues to resonate.

Edward P. Dozier was the first American Indian to establish a career as an academic anthropologist. In doing so, he faced a double paradox—academic and cultural. The notion of objectivity that governed academic anthropology at the time dictated that researchers be impartial outsiders. Scientific knowledge was considered unbiased, impersonal, and public. In contrast, Dozier’s Pueblo Indian culture regarded knowledge as privileged, personal, and gendered. Ceremonial knowledge was protected by secrecy and was never intended to be made public, either within or outside of the community. As an indigenous ethnologist and linguist, Dozier negotiated a careful balance between the conflicting values of a social scientist and a Pueblo Indian. Based on archival research, ethnographic fieldwork at Santa Clara Pueblo, and extensive interviews, this intellectual biography traces Dozier’s education from a Bureau of Indian Affairs day school through the University of New Mexico on federal reimbursable loans and graduate school on the GI Bill. Dozier was the first graduate of the new post–World War II doctoral program in anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1952. Beginning with his multicultural and linguistic heritage, the book interprets pivotal moments in his career, including the impact of Pueblo kinship on his indigenous research at Tewa Village (Hano); his rising academic standing and Indian advocacy at Northwestern University; his achievement of full academic status after he conducted non-indigenous fieldwork with the Kalinga in the Philippines; and his leadership in establishing American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Norcini interprets Dozier’s career within the contexts of the history of American anthropology and Pueblo Indian culture. In the final analysis, Dozier is positioned as a transitional figure who helped transform the historical paradox of an American Indian anthropologist into the contemporary paradigm of indigenous scholarship in the academy.