COLIN RENFREW, a towering influence in archaeology for decades, sums up how the field has endeavoured to reconstruct our human past, before examining the unsolved problems that remain. For example, archaeologists do not fully understand why cultures and civilisations developed in the ways that they did, nor how the human mind developed. Renfrew argues that we need a new theory of cognitive and developmental archaeology. Prehistory is a remarkably useful text in that it will generate lively, thoughtful and passionate discussion and inspire new ways of examining existing evidence.
Prehistory
Random House
