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The Growth of Archaeology in the West Coast and the Great Basin, 1935-60*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Clement W. Meighan
Clement W. Meighan*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, Calif.
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Abstract

Archaeological research in the Far West of North America is reviewed in terms of the contributions to methodology and theory. The generally simple level of culture in an area in which functioning native cultures survived until recent times has led to the perfection of analytical techniques for non-ceramic evidence, the development of ingenuity in deriving conclusions, and a considerable use of the direct-historical approach. New methodological approaches have been developed in analysis of physical components of sites, determination of food resources, estimation of population density, establishment of functional typologies, testing of the value of chemical and other changes for chronological control, and experimentation with statistical techniques of seriation. Theoretical trends include a lack of culture classification systems comparable to those in other North American areas, a dependence on classificatory units on the level of the complex or assemblage, and a tendency toward the development of a classificatory system based on an ecological framework.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , July 1961 , pp. 33 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1961

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Footnotes

*

Presented in a symposium, Twenty-five Years of American Archaeology, at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, May 6, 1960, New Haven, Connecticut.

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