Readings in Language and Mind Book

Preucel's study is broadly structured as a historical survey of archaeology's engagement with the interpretive principles of semiotics by way of the latter's formative influence on structuralism and its subsequent critiques, with particular attention devoted to the semiotic theory formulated by Charles Sanders Pierce. While the author offers several case studies which do illustrate the inherent potential of archaeological data as abstract as settlement organization and architectural style to communicate defined ideological values, the methodological utility he seeks to demonstrate in framing these data within Pierce's modular typology of signs is not entirely convincing, though it may aid in rendering explicit certain analytical perspectives and casting into sharper relief emic/etic distinctions.