How the discipline turns dirt into argument.
10 topics · 11 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Principles of Archaeological Ethics
Society for American Archaeology · 1996
Codifies stewardship of the archaeological record, not ownership of it, as the discipline's first obligation, ahead of publication, training and even…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Methods & Aims in Archaeology
W. M. Flinders Petrie · 1904
Argues that careful, systematic recording of stratigraphy and small finds during excavation, not the recovery of treasure, is what makes archaeology…
+1 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Excavations in Cranborne Chase, near Rushmore, on the Borders of Dorset and Wilts
Augustus Pitt Rivers · 1887
Insists that every object recovered from a dig — worked or plain, valuable or not — be plotted and published with its exact stratigraphic position,…
+6 more at this level
11 works
Society for American Archaeology
Codifies stewardship of the archaeological record, not ownership of it, as the discipline's first obligation, ahead of publication, training and even research itself.
2 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026James Osborne (The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures)
Explains why pottery carries most of the dating and cultural evidence on an excavation: it is ubiquitous, effectively indestructible in sherd form, and its styles change fast enough to serve as a clock.
link checked 17 Sept 2026W. M. Flinders Petrie
Argues that careful, systematic recording of stratigraphy and small finds during excavation, not the recovery of treasure, is what makes archaeology a science.
260 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026English Heritage
Sets out what geophysical survey can and cannot tell an excavator before the ground is broken, and argues it should be routine in field evaluation rather than an occasional extra.
60 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Augustus Pitt Rivers
Insists that every object recovered from a dig — worked or plain, valuable or not — be plotted and published with its exact stratigraphic position, treating total recovery and precise record-keeping as excavation's basic obligation.
W. M. Flinders Petrie
Shows that predynastic Egyptian grave groups can be placed in relative chronological order purely from the gradual change of their pottery forms, inventing sequence dating without any absolute date to anchor it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Christopher Hawkes
Proposes a 'ladder of inference' in which technology is the easiest thing to read from archaeological remains and religion and ideology the hardest, and argues excavators routinely claim more than their evidence supports.
Lewis R. Binford
Argues that a culture's whole organisation, not just its technology, is patterned in the archaeological record, so archaeology should test general laws of cultural process rather than only reconstruct culture history.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Michael B. Schiffer
Distinguishes an artefact's systemic context, while still part of a living behavioural system, from its archaeological context once deposited, arguing formation processes must be modelled before the record can support inferences about behaviour.
Edward C. Harris
Introduces the Harris Matrix, arguing that a site's stratigraphic sequence can be recorded and analysed independently of interpretation, as a diagram of physical relationships alone.
170 pageslink checked 17 Sept 2026Cornelius Holtorf
Argues that a megalithic monument's meaning is made and remade by every generation that reuses, reinterprets or ignores it, so its prehistoric origin explains only one moment of a much longer biography.
link checked 17 Sept 2026