{"product_id":"the-quality-of-the-archaeological-record","title":"The Quality of the Archaeological Record","description":"\u003cp\u003ePaleobiology struggled for decades to influence our understanding of evolution and the history of life because it was stymied by a focus on microevolution and an incredibly patchy fossil record. But in the 1970s  the field took a radical turn  as paleobiologists began to investigate processes that could only be recognized in the fossil record across larger scales of time and space. That turn led to a new wave of macroevolutionary investigations  novel insights into the evolution of species  and a growing prominence for the field among the biological sciences.  In The Quality of the Archaeological Record  Charles Perreault shows that archaeology not only faces a parallel problem  but may also find a model in the rise of paleobiology for a shift in the science and theory of the field. To get there  he proposes a more macroscale approach to making sense of the archaeological record  an approach that reveals patterns and processes not visible within the span of a human lifetime  but rather across an observation window thousands of years long and thousands of kilometers wide. Just as with the fossil record  the archaeological record has the scope necessary to detect macroscale cultural phenomena because it can provide samples that are large enough to cancel out the noise generated by micro-scale events. By recalibrating their research to the quality of the archaeological record and developing a true macroarchaeology program  Perreault argues  archaeologists can finally unleash the full contributive value of their discipline.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44963037970485,"sku":"ByrdShop_022663096X","price":28.81,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780226630960.jpg?v=1770404551","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-quality-of-the-archaeological-record","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}