Lewis Roberts Binford (November 21, 1931 – April 11, 2011) was an American
archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
known for his influential work in
archaeological theory
Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred ...
,
ethnoarchaeology and the
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
period. He is widely considered among the most influential archaeologists of the later 20th century, and is credited with fundamentally changing the field with the introduction of
processual archaeology (or the "New Archaeology") in the 1960s.
Binford's influence was controversial, however, and most theoretical work in archaeology in the late 1980s and 1990s was explicitly construed as either a reaction to or in support of the processual
paradigm
In science and philosophy, a paradigm () is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field.
Etymology
''Paradigm'' comes f ...
. Recent appraisals have judged that his approach owed more to prior work in the 1940s and 50s than suggested by Binford's strong criticism of his predecessors.
Early life and education
Binford was born in
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk ( ) is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1705, it had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia B ...
on November 21, 1931. As a child he was interested in animals, and after finishing high school at
Matthew Fontaine Maury High School
Matthew Fontaine Maury High School also known as Maury High School, is a high school located in the Ghent area of Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Maury's school mascot is the Commodore. The high school is named for Matthew Fontaine Maury. In ...
studied
wildlife biology A wildlife biologist studies animals and their behavior along with the role each animal plays in its natural habitat. The duties of a wildlife biologist can include: developing and conducting experiments/studies on animals in their natural habitats, ...
at the
Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six re ...
. Previously a mediocre student, Binford excelled in college and considered pursuing an academic career in biology until he was put off the idea when a professor suggested that there were "still a few species of blind cave salamanders" that he could be the first to study. It was during his time in the military that Binford first became interested in anthropology and archaeology. After graduating he was
drafted as an interpreter and assigned to a group of anthropologists tasked with resettling people on the Pacific islands occupied by the United States during World War II. He also became involved with the recovery of archaeological material from tombs on
Okinawa
is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 Square kilometre, km2 (880 sq mi).
...
that were to be removed to make way for a military base. Though he had no training in archaeology, Binford found himself excavating and identifying these artifacts, which were then used to restock the destroyed museum in
Shuri.
After leaving the military Binford went to study anthropology at the
University of North Carolina
The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC S ...
(UNC). The military subsidy he received was not enough to fund his study completely, so Binford used the skills in construction he learned from his father (a carpenter) to start a modest contracting business. He gained a second
BA at UNC and then in 1957 transferred to the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
to complete a combined
MA and
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to:
* Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification
Entertainment
* '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series
* '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic
* Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group
** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...
. His thesis was the interaction between
Native Americans and the
first English colonists in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...
, a subject he became interested in while still at UNC.
New Archaeology
Binford first became dissatisfied with the present state of archaeology while an undergraduate at UNC. He felt that
culture history
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture.
It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural ev ...
reflected the same 'stamp collecting' mentality that had turned him away from biology. At Michigan, he saw a sharp contrast between the "excitement" of the anthropology department's
cultural anthropologists
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylo ...
(which included
Leslie White
Leslie Alvin White (January 19, 1900, Salida, Colorado – March 31, 1975, Lone Pine, California) was an American anthropologist known for his advocacy of the theories on cultural evolution, sociocultural evolution, and especially neoevolu ...
) and the "people in white coats counting their potsherds" in the Museum of Anthropology. His first academic position was as an
assistant professor
Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada.
Overview
This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree
A docto ...
at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, where he taught
New World archaeology and statistical methods in archaeology. Shortly after his appointment he wrote his first major article, ''Archaeology as Anthropology'' (1962), which was stimulated by problems in archaeological methodology that had become apparent with the use of
radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was de ...
to verify the dates and
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.T ...
typologies generated with
relative dating
Relative dating is the science of determining the relative order of past events (i.e., the age of an object in comparison to another), without necessarily determining their absolute age (i.e., estimated age). In geology, rock or superficial dep ...
techniques such as
seriation. Binford criticised what he saw as a tendency to treat artifacts as undifferentiated traits,
and to explain variations in these traits only in terms of
cultural diffusion
In cultural anthropology and cultural geography, cultural diffusion, as conceptualized by Leo Frobenius in his 1897/98 publication ''Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis'', is the spread of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, religions, technolo ...
. He proposed that the goal of archaeology was exactly the same as that of anthropology more generally, viz. to "explicate and explain the total range of physical and cultural similarities and differences characteristic of the entire spatio-temporal span of man's existence."
This would be achieved by relating artifacts to human behavior, and behavior to cultural systems (as understood by his mentor, cultural anthropologist Leslie White).
Several other archaeologists at Chicago shared Binford's ideas, a group their critics began calling the "New Archaeologists". In 1966 they presented a set of papers at a meeting of the
Society for American Archaeology
The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is a professional association for the archaeology of the Americas. It was founded in 1934 and its headquarters are in based in Washington, D.C. , it has 7,500 members. Its current president is Deborah L ...
which were later collected in the landmark ''New Perspectives in Archaeology'' (1968), edited by Binford and his then wife Sally, also an archaeologist.
By the time this volume was published he had left Chicago – dismissed, according to Binford, because of increasing tension between himself and the senior archaeologists in the faculty, particularly
Robert Braidwood
Robert John Braidwood (29 July 1907 – 15 January 2003) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist, one of the founders of scientific archaeology, and a leader in the field of Near Eastern Prehistory.
Life
Braidwood was born July 29, ...
. He moved to the
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...
for a year and then on to
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
. He did not like the atmosphere at UCLA's large faculty, and so took the opportunity to relocate to the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
in 1969.
Ethnoarchaeology
Binford withdrew from the theoretical debates that followed the rapid adoption of New Archaeology (by then also called
processual archaeology) in the 1960s and 70s, instead focusing on his work on the
Mousterian
The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the l ...
, a
Middle Palaeolithic
The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Pale ...
lithic industry found in Europe, North Africa and the Near East. In 1969 he decided to undertake
ethnographic
Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...
fieldwork among the
Nunamiut
The Nunamiut or Nunatamiut ( ik, Nunataaġmiut, , "People of the Land") are semi-nomadic inland Iñupiat located in the northern and northwestern Alaskan interior, mostly around Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska.
History
Early Nunamiut lived by hunting carib ...
in
Alaska
Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...
, in order to better understand the
periglacial environment that Mousterian hominins occupied, and to see first hand how
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fung ...
behavior is reflected in material remains. This methodology—conducting ethnographic fieldwork to establish firm correlations between behavior and material culture—is known as
ethnoarchaeology and is credited to Binford. Most of Binford's later work was focused on the
Palaeolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
and hunter-gatherers in the archaeological record.
Later career
Binford joined the
Southern Methodist University
, mottoeng = " The truth will make you free"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = SACS
, academic_affiliations =
, religious_affiliation = United Methodist Church
, president = R. Gerald Turner
, p ...
faculty in 1991, after teaching for 23 years as a distinguished professor at the
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...
.
Binford's last published book, ''Constructing Frames of Reference'' (2001), was edited by his then wife, Nancy Medaris Stone. His wife at the time of his death, Amber Johnson, has said that she and a colleague will finish editing a book Binford had in progress at the time of his death.
He died on April 11, 2011 in
Kirksville, Missouri
Kirksville is the county seat and most populous city in Adair County, Missouri. Located in Benton Township, Adair County, Missouri, Benton Township, its population was 17,530 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Kirksville is home to ...
, at the age of 79.
Personal life
Binford was married six times. His first marriage was to Jean Riley Mock, with whom he had his only daughter, Martha. Binford also had a son, Clinton, who died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident in 1976. He frequently collaborated with his third wife,
Sally Binford
Sally Binford (née Rosen; 1924–1994) was an archaeologist and feminist. A prehistorian, she contributed alongside her husband (Lewis Binford) to the formation of processual archaeology.
Early life
She was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish ...
, who was also an archaeologist; the couple married while they were graduate students at the University of Chicago, and co-edited ''New Perspectives in Archaeology'' (1968), among other works. After his marriage to Sally ended, Binford married Mary Ann Howell nee Wilson, an elementary school teacher. His fifth wife was Nancy Medaris Stone, an archaeologist. At the time of his death he was married to Amber Johnson, professor and chair of sociology and anthropology at
Truman State University
Truman State University (TSU or Truman) is a public university in Kirksville, Missouri. It had 4,225 enrolled students in the fall of 2021 pursuing degrees in 52 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs.
The university is named for U.S. Presid ...
who had worked with Binford as a research student at Southern Methodist University.
Influence
Binford is mainly known for his contributions to
archaeological theory
Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred ...
and his promotion of
ethnoarchaeological research. As a leading advocate of the "New Archaeology" movement of the 1960s, he proposed a number of ideas that became central to
processual archaeology. Binford and other New Archaeologists argued that there should be a greater application of scientific methodologies and the
hypothetico-deductive method in archaeology. He placed a strong emphasis on generalities and the way in which human beings interact with their ecological niche, defining culture as the extrasomatic means of adaptation. This view reflects the influence of his Ph.D supervisor,
Leslie White
Leslie Alvin White (January 19, 1900, Salida, Colorado – March 31, 1975, Lone Pine, California) was an American anthropologist known for his advocacy of the theories on cultural evolution, sociocultural evolution, and especially neoevolu ...
. Binford's work can largely be seen as a reaction to the earlier
culture history
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture.
It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural ev ...
approach to archaeology. New Archaeology was considered a revolution in archaeological theory.
Binford was involved in several high-profile debates including arguments with
James Sackett on the nature and function of style and on symbolism and methodology with
Ian Hodder
Ian Richard Hodder (born 23 November 1948, in Bristol) is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980–1990. At this time he had suc ...
. Binford has spoken out and reacted to a number of schools of thought, particularly the
post-processual school, the behavioural school, and symbolic and postmodern anthropologies. Binford was also known for a friendlier rivalry with French archaeologist
François Bordes
François Bordes (December 30, 1919 – April 30, 1981), also known by the pen name of Francis Carsac, was a French scientist, geologist, archaeologist, and science fiction writer.
Biography
He was a professor of prehistory and quaternary g ...
, with whom he argued over the interpretation of
Mousterian
The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the l ...
sites. Binford's disagreement with Bordes over the interpretation of Mousterian stone artifacts provided the impetus for much of Binford's theoretical work. Bordes interpreted variability in Mousterian assemblages as evidence of different tribes, while Binford felt that a functional interpretation of the different assemblages would be more appropriate. His subsequent inability to explain the Mousterian facies using a functional approach led to his ethnoarchaeological work among the
Nunamiut
The Nunamiut or Nunatamiut ( ik, Nunataaġmiut, , "People of the Land") are semi-nomadic inland Iñupiat located in the northern and northwestern Alaskan interior, mostly around Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska.
History
Early Nunamiut lived by hunting carib ...
and the development of his
middle-range theory.
Awards and recognition
Binford was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
in 2001. He also received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 from the
Society for American Archaeology
The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is a professional association for the archaeology of the Americas. It was founded in 1934 and its headquarters are in based in Washington, D.C. , it has 7,500 members. Its current president is Deborah L ...
and an honorary doctorate from
Leiden University
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city o ...
. There is an
asteroid
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...
named ''Binford'' in his honor.
Works
*''Constructing frames of reference:an analytical method for archaeological theory building using hunter-gatherer and environmental data sets'' Berkeley: University of California Press, (2001)
*''Debating Archaeology'' San Diego: Academic Press, (1989)
*''Faunal Remains from
Klasies River Mouth'' (1984)
*''Working at Archaeology (Studies in Archaeology)'' (1983)
*''In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record'' (1983)
*''Bones, Ancient Men and Modern Myths'' (1981)
*''Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology'' (1978)
*''An archaeological perspective'' New York: Seminar Press, (1972)
*''New Perspectives in Archaeology'' (1968)
*''Archaeology as Anthropology'' (1962)
Notes
References
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External links
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Binford, Lewis
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
American archaeologists
Prehistorians
1931 births
2011 deaths
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts alumni
Writers from Norfolk, Virginia
Virginia Tech alumni
University of New Mexico faculty
University of Chicago faculty
Southern Methodist University faculty