Historical Archaeology: A Comprehensive Guide

Description

Author: Hume, Ivor Noël  (1927-2017)

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (New York)

Pub Date: 1968

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Book: Good.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  Very light edge and corner wear.  Includes ephemera.  Dust Jacket: Fair.  Price clipped.  One approx. 1/4″  closed tear at upper rear corner at spine head.  A second closed tear, approx. 1/8″, along upper rear cover edge.  Smudging to rear spine edge.  Edge and corner wear.

Notes:  An instruction manual, plain and simple.  From organizing a dig or an expedition to defining roles at a dig site, photography, artifact preservation, to making the final report.  You’ve all done it, you know.  Basic procedures, clear and concise.  “The discovery of an archaeological site imposes a responsibility on the finder; he becomes either its protector or its nemesis.  The obligations are evident, but the course of action he should follow depends on circumstances.  If the site lies in the path of a rapidly advancing highway or is exposed, already mutilated, on a graded housing lot, it is better to salvage something than to do nothing.  But if the site is not threatened with certain and immediate destruction, there is no need for instant action; instead, there is time to plan and prepare, for, make no mistake, a poorly thought out and inadequately supported excavation will serve the past no better than the builder’s bulldozer.”  (Pages 42-43).  The ephemera included is an offprint of the review of the book from American Antiquity (Vol. 35, No. 1, 1970).  Hume was the chief archaeologist at Colonial Williamsburg.