“Artifacts are man-man objects; they are also fossilized ideas”
This brief introduction to archaeology has aged remarkably well. It covers most of the basic strategies used in excavation and archaeological analysis incredibly well— managing to be both concise and informative at the same time. There are some longer dry sections attempting to do things like apply linguistic models to archaeology, and utilize other contemporary social science tactics that have since fallen out of favor. But we can hardly hold that against the book, as Deetz self admits that his field of archaeology was in its infancy at the time of his writing. He maintains a clear distinction between his ideas and generally accepted archaeological ideas and his future section at the end predicts the rise of computer relevancy to archaeological practice. Archaeology students may find this work to be a bit outdated and simple, but for the general reader curious about archaeology this is a great place to start.
