Lewis Binford - Ethnoarchaeology

Ethnoarchaeology

Binford withdrew from the theoretical debates that followed the rapid adoption of New Archaeology (by then also called processual archaeology) in the 1960s and 70s, instead focusing on his work on the Mousterian, a Middle Palaeolithic lithic industry found in Europe, North Africa and the Near East. In 1969 he decided to undertake ethnographic fieldwork among the Nunamiut in Alaska, in order to better understand the periglacial environment that Mousterian hominins occupied, and to see first hand how hunter-gatherer behavior is reflected in material remains. This methodology—conducting ethnographic fieldwork to establish firm correlations between behavior and material culture—is known as ethnoarchaeology and is credited to Binford. Most of Binford's later work was focused on the Palaeolithic and hunter-gatherers in the archaeological record.