Reviews for Archaeology: An Introduction: The History, Principles and Methods of Modern Archaeology

The average rating for Archaeology: An Introduction: The History, Principles and Methods of Modern Archaeology based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-09-29 00:00:00 Ashley Stockdale You really have to be something of an archaeology geek for Kevin Greene's Introduction: The History, Priciples and Methods of Modern Archaeology to be for you. This is not a slick book for general consumption. It is a deceptively long textbook and basic introduction to many of the issues facing archaeology throughout its long life from antiquarianism to today. It is very much for the archaeology beginner, but if you contain even a touch of interest in the subject, Greene's book should deepen your interest and give you a decent grounding in history, excavation, dating, archaeological science and a taste of how theory is coming to dominate the field. The strongest aspect of Greene's book is the way in which he reminds us that there are few "true" answers in archaeology. Archaeology is a field that offers us artefacts without complete contexts, and the contexts we are able to generate for the artefacts, no matter how accurate they may be, are always tainted by our own biases and our present. Even radiocarbon dating, one of the great strengths of modern archaeology has a margin of error that makes perfect dating impossible. Greene crafts a solid argument that this "imperfection" in archaeology is one of its greatest attributes, giving archaeology an exciting, mutable quality that other disciplines could benefit from. He also strips away the recent antiquarian romanticism of Indiana Jones' grave robbing adventures, and delivers beginners with the truth about archaeology as a career -- it can be tedious and boring. Archaeology, as Greene rightly explains is often totally cerebral work. It can include the counting of thousands of kernels of pollen. It can include the meticulous cleaning of bones and remains. It can include the slow uncovering of artefacts with small shovels and brushes before undergoing a slow and equally meticulous process of preservation. It can include local politics, national politics and a constant struggle for money and against money. It can include endless hours of thinking and reading and considering. And it is a field that is shrinking as the world's finite artefacts are destroyed or gathered. But if the reader is still interested in archaeology after all this, Greene provides the most extensive "further reading" list I have seen for quite sometime. Whatever catches your fancy, Greene's got books for you to read. And read them I will. If there is any weakness in Greene's book it is his assumption that his readers inherently understand the lingo of archaeology -- most of his readers will be beginners, after all. He fails to provide a glossary, and quite often the terminology is indecipherable from the context of a paragraph or section. Still, this is no reason to avoid Greene. Just grab yourself a good dictionary and you should be fine.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-10 00:00:00 MANABU BANNAI This book gets a bum rap. Many reviewers are disappointed that it is not a field manual that teaches you how to do archaeology. The textbook takes a historical approach to the field of archaeology and covers the evolution of methods. It is well footnoted and there are further reading recommendations to the field manuals, lab manuals, and theoretical works that would fill the education in archaeology. It is appropriate for use at the undergraduate lower division level in an introductory course. The book is written for a British audience with most examples pulled from the archaeology of Roman Britain, but does also reference continental and American contributions to the field. The final chapter does effectively deal with the current 21st Century theoretical debates in the field laying out current controversies, so that someone considering working in the field can figure out in which camp they fit (which will be of extreme importance in choosing a PhD program in the future).