Lewis Binford is an important archaeologist. In the sixties he founded the "New Archeology", also knows as "Ethnoarchaeology"or "Processual archaeology" school of thought, in wich the etnographic method its interpretative base of the archaeological record. This paradigm was very relevant in archeology, and determined scientific research specially until the end of seventies.
Binford developed his teory in works how "Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology", "Archaeology as Anthropology" or " In Pursuit of the Past". In those articles he raised that to interpret the archaeological sites and artifacts it must watch how are formed through the etnographic observation of "primitives" people that are living in our times.
Watching daily activities and his waste ( what will become in the archaeological record in the future) in a particular culture, he succeeded make the "middle range" theory, a generalization about the formation and interpretation of archaeological record.
I admire that beacuase his theory is based on field work. The more famous is that he was performed in Alaska whit the Nunamiut people, a nomad tribe that lives of the hunting of caribou. He was living whit them and followed in they constant transhumance around those cold lands.Finally, his wok meant a break in history of the discipline, and expand the archaeological search far away the excavation, since Binford work's the study object is the territory.
