Klejn L. S. THEORETICAL ARCHAEOLOGY/ VOLUME.1. – NEW ARCHAEOLOGY
This book has been written 35 years ago (in 1972 – 73), the last time edited (and finished off) 30 years ago (by 1978) and never was printed. Nevertheless it existed in our discipline, was exposed by me in lectures, many archaeologists read it (in Leningrad, Novosibirsk and Rostov-on-Don). It somehow told upon the development of archaeological thinking in our country and at least therefore has a historical interest. Several considerations that entered later the scholarly knowledge abroad were expressed by me earlier – in this book. This is not my blame that it was not accepted to print and the possibilities to raise the authority of our scholarship was missed.
However, as I have made certain from communication with youth, the book is not only of historical interest. Nowhere else placed in it elaborations of many theoretical subjects can be found. They can be helpful to modern archaeologists in mastering many theoretical problems of archaeology: how to build explanation in archaeology, to find the role of laws and guaranties of truth, application of models, the Systemic approach and so on.
In my memoirs being published now (Klejn 2010, it is chapter 28 there) I describe in detail my toils with this book. I shall adduce these recollections also here because they must help the reader to imagine the conditions of its writing and to comprehend some unavoidable then conventionalities…
