Living Archaeology

"Living archaeology," says Richard Gould, "is ethnoarchaeology in the active voice."

Using as case studies his own observations of Australian Aborigines, and those of others, the author presents a unified theory of ethnoarchaeology. He demonstrates a reliable way to infer adaptive behavior in prehistoric communities by studying adaptive behavior in a contemporary society and noting the evidence of this behavior in material discards.

Gould examines and dismisses the argument by analogy, long accepted as fundamental in earlier archaeological studies of this kind, and, as an alternative, he proposes the argument by anomaly. The book starts by recording a day in the life of a traditional Australian Desert Aborigine camp. the author identifies many social, verbal, and ideational interactions that would be difficult, if not impossible, to infer directly from the typical 'archaeological' remains of this non-material behavior. The book examines differences between actual as opposed to anticipated human behavior and suggests that understanding the reasons for these contrasts is what characterizes ethnoarchaeology at its best.

Since completing his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965, Dr. Gould studied human cultural and behavioral adaptations to stress, risk, and uncertainty. Initially these studies looked at living societies — specifically, in NW California, in Australia's Western Desert, and in subarctic Finland — and related the findings to archaeological remains. This interest later extended to the study of shipwrecks and losses at sea, with underwater fieldwork in Bermuda and in the Dry Tortugas, FL. He was Assistant Curator of North American Archaeology at the American Museum of Natural History, NY, (1965-71) and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu (1971-81). He came to Brown University as Professor of Anthropology in 1981. After the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, he led trial forensic recoveries at the WTC and full recoveries at "The Station" Nightclub Fire scene in West Warwick, RI, in 2003. Most recently, he assisted with victim identifications and recoveries as a forensic anthropologist with the federal Disaster Mortuary Operations Recovery Team (DMORT) in Gulfport, MS, and in New Orleans/St. Bernard Parish, LA, immediately following hurricane Katrina. Dr. Gould has published 12 books and monographs as well as 44 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 75 other articles (in Natural History, The Ecologist, Rhode Island History, Pacific Discovery, Masterkey, Archaeology, SAA Archaeological Record, The Encyclopedia of Underwater and Marine Archaeology, and the Oxford Companion to Archaeology), and 70 reviews and review articles. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is a past-Chair of Section H (Anthropology) of the AAAS. He was also a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and past-Chair of the AAA Committee on Ethics. He currently serves as a forensic anthropologist with DMORT and founded Forensic Archaeology Recovery (FAR), a volunteer team based in Rhode Island.