This book is about historical archaeologies all over the world; about their history, their methods, and their raison d'etre. The focus is on an existential question for archaeology: whether investigations of mate- rial culture are necessary at all when studying societies with writing. Is it not sufficient to read and interpret texts if we wish to understand and explain historical periods? This book has been written out of a conviction that archaeology is important, even in the study of literate societies. Yet the book has also been written out of a conviction that the importance of the...