The new history of archaeology: A critical appraisal

In recent years, study of the history of archaeology has been transformed. With the increasing importance of postprocessual explanatory frameworks, historical studies have been professionalized and have assumed a major role in archaeological debates. This widespread concern with historiography is, however, the result of parallel evolutions of the history of archaeology in countries such as United Kingdom, United States, France and Germany. This paper examines how these national processes have converged in the creation of a new history of archaeology that has adopted a research program characterized by a numbers of traits. The article concludes with a critical examination of this new historiography.