Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality: A Dialectical Approach to Artifact Classification and Sorting

by William Y. Adams, Ernest W. Adams

Classifications are central to archaeology. Yet the theoretical literature on the subject, both in archaeology and the philosophy of science, bears very little relationship to what actually occurs in practice. This problem has long interested William Adams, a field archaeologist, and Ernest Adams, a philosopher of science, who describe their book as an ethnography of archaeological classification. It is a study of the various ways in which field archaeologists set about making and using classifications to meet a variety of practical needs. The authors first discuss how humans form concepts. They then describe and analyse in detail a specific example of an archaeological classification, and go on to consider what theoretical generalizations can be derived from the study of actual in-use classifications. Throughout the book, they stress the importance of having a clearly defined purpose and practical procedures when developing and applying classifications.

452 pages, Paperback

First published July 26, 1991

About the author

William 'Bill' Yewdale Adams, Ph.D. (Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1957; B.A., Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) was Emeritus Professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky. The death of his father, historian William Forbes Adams, led the family (including his older brother Ernest W. Adams) to relocate to a Navajo Reservation where the experience of Navajo culture first sparked young Bill's interest in anthropology.

Professor Adams was the winner of the 1978 Herskovits Prize for his history of Nubia, and in 2005 he was awarded Sudan's highest civilian honor, the Order of the Two Niles, for his contributions to Nubian history.