American Archaeology Textbooks as Reflections of the History of the Discipline

Abstract

Textbooks introduce students to a discipline's methods and goals. In combination with the desire of publishers to have up-to-date products, each textbook should, hypothetically, reflect the state of the art in a discipline at the time of its publication. Two series of multi-edition textbooks authored by the same individuals confirm the hypothesis for American archaeology that textbooks reflect disciplinary history. These volumes also indicate that textbook series, like much secondary literature, do not provide nuanced and thorough reflections of disciplinary history.