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My background is in archaeology, so that's what I'll discuss. The other social sciences had similar debates around the same time, plus or minus a few years. If
by AlotOfReading 7y ago
My background is in archaeology, so that's what I'll discuss. The other social sciences had similar debates around the same time, plus or minus a few years.
If you're looking to understand one perspective from this period, I'd actually recommend Binford's Debating Archaeology [1]. This book summarizes a whole slew of arguments Binford had in the 80s with a number of other archaeologists, including his famous spate with Gould over the limits of empiricism. As it's a summary, it was obviously written after all of this was settled.
Selected works from the era might be Hodder's Symbolic and Structural Archaeology[2] or kohl's "Limits to Post-Processual Archaeology" [3]. The former was essentially an opening salvo for this debate and the latter is an example of a the reactions to it.
[1] Binford, L. R. (2016). Debating Archaeology: Updated Edition. Routledge.
[2] Hodder, I. (1982). Symbolic and Structural Archaeology.
[3] Kohl, P. L. (1993). Limits to a post-processual archaeology (or, The dangers of a new scholasticism). Archaeological Theory: who sets the agenda, 13-19.