Many consider Lewis Binford to be the single most influential figure in archaeology in the last half-century. His contributions to the "New Archaeology" changed the course of the field, as he argued for the development of a scientifically rigorous framework to guide the excavation and interpretation of the archaeological record. This book, the culmination of Binford's intellectual legacy thus far, presents a detailed description of his methodology and its significance for understanding hunter-gatherer cultures on a global basis. This landmark publication will be an important step in understanding the great process of cultural evolution and will change the way archaeology proceeds as a scientific enterprise.

This work provides a major synthesis of an enormous body of cultural and environmental information and offers many original insights into the past. Binford helped pioneer what is now called "ethnoarchaeology"-the study of living societies to help explain cultural patterns in the archaeological record-and this book is grounded on a detailed analysis of ethnographic data from about 340 historically known hunter-gatherer populations. The methodological framework based on this data will reshape the paradigms through which we understand human culture for years to come.

"This is a very significant contribution to the field. . . . Many of the ideas presented in this book were foreshadowed in [Binford's] earlier work, but nowhere have they been developed as fully as they are here."-James F. O'Connell, author of A Prehistory of Australia, New Guinea, and Sahul

"This is a landmark work. It provides a major synthesis of a huge body of cultural and environmental information and offers a number of original, provocative insights into hunter-gatherer lifeways. It also provides a methodological framework that should be highly influential for years to come."-Jeremy A. Sabloff, Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum