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Palaeoenvironment and Site Context. Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile

cation in the form of the Nubian typology, Part V addresses the programmatic literature on archaeological classification in an effort to lay to rest some of the decades-old disagreement and debate. For most readers, this will prove the least satisfactory part of the book. While there are some important insights and distinctions, once again they are frequently only slightly reworked notions that are better known under other names. Their reading of the archaeological debates is suspect as well. It is difficult to see how, for example, such diverse authors as Ford and Spaulding can be construed to have shared the same ultimate goal for artifact classification in any meaningful way (p. 270), when disagreement over the very nature of types themselves was the root of the Ford/Spaulding debate. One of the main themes of the volume revolves around "pragmatic," "practical," and "useful." Good classification is practical, an assertion about which no one is likely to quibble, at least at first blush. And quite correctly, the authors are steadfast in their insistence that classifications must have purposes, potentially providing a yard stick by means of which "practical" can be measured. But once again, the detailed linkages are not provided. How purpose enters into the construction of classifications is not developed with the result that the insistence on practicality takes on the feel of a post hoc excuse for procedures that otherwise would be questioned. One of the greatest strengths as well as the greatest weakness of the volume lies in the consistent methodological position assumed. Not only is classification seen as an inductive operation, their dialectic notwithstanding, but their analysis of classification likewise is done in a Baconian mode. There simply is no theory. There is no role for theory in constructing classification—hence the lack of detailed justifications for the choices involved despite the recognition of the importance of purpose. Classifications are constructed by trial and error and judged adequate if they "work" for some problem. Intuition and experience become the major ingredients in archaeological classification, the very fodder that has fueled the postprocessualist critique of archaeology. This is exactly the position taken by people like Krieger 50 years ago! We are no closer to knowing why a particular classification "works" for a particular purpose than Krieger was and, because of that, no better off when it comes to trying to improve classifications that "work." All inductive analyses suffer from one great flaw— the results are wholly conditioned by the initial set of things grouped together as the subject. What is science diners enormously if science is limited to physics and chemistry or if it is taken to include things like sociology. The Adams', in their commitment to an inductive methodology, have taken W. Y. Adams's Nubian typology as typical of classification. It is for this reason that Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality seems to be more of an apologia for the Nubian typology than a general contribution. The extent to which the intuitive structure represented by the Nubian typology (whose credentials as a means of assaying age in medieval Egypt are strong) typifies all classifications defines the utility of Archaeological Typology and Practical Reality as a description of practice. Even so, this is a strength of the volume; it is an accurate description of the way at least some archaeological classification has been done. People who read it with that objective will be rewarded. But it is a rearward-looking volume; as an inductive rationalization of an existing practice it provides no clues, no rationales for improving archaeological classification, and that is what we desperately need.