3. What is New Archaeology:
The major thrust of this approach has bun the contention that the understanding of the
causes of cultural change (Process) in varying environmental and cultural setting should
be the principal goal of archaeology.“ (Lewis Roberts Binford)
The goal of archaeology were in fact, the goals of anthropology, which were to answer
question about humans and human society.“(Lewis Roberts Binford)
New archaeology represents a precipitate, unplanned and unfinished exploration of new
disciplinary field space, conducted with very varied success in an atmosphere of
complete uncertainly. What at first appeared to be mercy a period of technical re-
equipment has produced profound practical, theoretical and philosophical problems to
which the new archaeologies have responded with divers new methods, new
observations, new paradigms and new theory. However, unlike its parents, the New
Archaeology is as yet a set of questions refer than a set of answers, when the questions
are answered it too will be old Archaeology. (David Leonard Clarke)
The new processual archaeology is the underlying historical processes which are at the
root of change. Archaeology has learnt to speak will greater authority and accuracy
about the ecology of past societies, their technology, their economic basis and their
social organization. New it is beginning to interest itself in the ideology of early
communities; their religions. The way they expressed rank, status and group identity.
(Andrew Colin Renfrew)
4. Beginning:
1958, two American anthropologists and
archaeologists:
Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips,
Method and theory in American Archaeology