Lewis Binford

Lewis Binford (1930–2011) was an American archaeologist who helped establish processual archaeology. He argued that archaeology should explain past societies through scientific methods, systems theory, and evidence about human behavior.

Kent Flannery: Kent Flannery is an American archaeologist known for research on the origins of agriculture and the development of archaeological theory. Flannery helped develop systems-oriented approaches that overlapped with Binford’s processual program.
Middle-range theory: Middle-range theory connects observable evidence to the past processes that produced it. Binford used it to infer behavior from archaeological remains without assuming a direct match.
Processual archaeology: Processual archaeology explains past cultural change through scientific methods, explicit theory, and analysis of systems and processes. Binford was its leading early advocate and helped define its research program.
Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology: Nunamiut ethnoarchaeology studies the material practices of Iñupiat caribou hunters in Alaska to inform interpretations of archaeological sites. Binford’s fieldwork with Nunamiut communities informed his models of hunting, mobility, and site formation.
Post-processual archaeology: Post-processual archaeology is a movement that emphasizes interpretation, agency, symbolism, and the situated character of archaeological knowledge. It emerged partly in response to processual claims about objectivity and general laws.
David L. Clarke: David L. Clarke was a British archaeologist who advanced the use of systems theory and quantitative methods in archaeology. Clarke’s analytical archaeology was a parallel effort to make archaeological explanation more systematic.
Ethnoarchaeology: Ethnoarchaeology studies living societies to understand how behavior creates material remains that archaeologists can interpret. Binford used observations of living groups to build and assess archaeological inferences.
Culture-historical archaeology: Culture-historical archaeology classifies artifacts and cultures to reconstruct their distributions and historical relationships. Binford criticized its emphasis on classification and description without adequate explanation.
Mousterian: The Mousterian is a Middle Paleolithic stone-tool tradition associated especially with Neanderthals in western Eurasia. Binford used variation in Mousterian assemblages to debate how tools related to behavior and function.
Archaeological theory: Archaeological theory comprises the concepts and explanatory frameworks used to interpret material evidence of the past. Binford helped move theory from background assumptions to explicit, debated parts of archaeological research.

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