Simon Holdaway

A Retrospective Review of Richard A. Gould's Living Archaeology

Three components provide the structure for Richard Gould’s book Living Archaeology. The first component presents his original re search into the cultural ecology and behavior of Aboriginal groups living in the Australian desert. This section also includes informa tion on Gould’s excavations at Puntutjarpa rock shelter located in the Western Desert and the James Range East shelter in the Central Desert. The second component of the book presents Australian ethnohis torical and archaeological research, which provides a continent-wide context for Gould’s work. Finally, there are a number of connecting chapters and sections that advance Gould’s theoretical arguments concerning the nature of the archaeological record and how ethnographic observations by archaeologists assist its interpretation. In this retrospective, we consider first his motivations for undertaking eth noarchaeological work, then his theoretical position, and finally his contribution to Australian archaeology.