Archaeology: socio-cultural development

Giorgio Buccellati – July 2026

Theory and method

processual, post-processual, anthropology

Binford ¹

Notes

¹^ As an autbiographical note, I may recall my first personal encounters with the “new archaeology” and in particular with Lewis Binford – first during my student years at the University of Chicago in the early sixties and then at UCLA in the late sixties. Direct personal contacts with Binford were limited, but the general atmosphere within which his early career developed touched me directly, and was in fact an important factor behind my role in establishing the Institute of Archaeology ast UCLA. A major reason behind the founding of the Institute was the desire by colleagues with diverging ideas about theory and method to etsablish an institutional framework within which these idea could be aired. My personal friendship with colleagues as different as Clem Meighan, Jim Hill or Jim Sackett on the one hand and Marija Gimbutas on the other played an important role in the whole process, as well as Colin Renfrew’s presence at UCLA as a result of his collaboration in the field with Gimbutas.