The new archaeology and the archaeology of Australia

Abstract

In 1980, Murray and White (T. Murray and J. P. White: Cambridge in the Bush? World Archaeology 13(2), p. 255-263), found in the new archaeology of the 1960s the seedbed of approaches and methods that underwrote the development of prehistoric archaeology of the continent of Australia. The great themes of the new archaeology approach to hunter-gatherer archaeology laid out first by Binford and others, and subsequently by British archaeologists such as Eric Higgs, were highly influential, but then so too were what would now be described as positivist approaches to theory building and methodology flowing from the work of Binford and David Clarke. 34 years have elapsed since that first assessment..