ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the specialisation that has also been the dominating trend within North American archaeology. It is clearly based in the epistemology of North American archaeology, as people have long realised that understanding rock art was intrinsic to the them and cultures who made it and that they simply have no way of knowing about it. Through the discovery of a large body of ethnographic data and accounts collected from the San in southern Africa, Lewis Williams was able to define many of the social and cultural contexts for the manufacture of San rock art. During this time, the bulk of American archaeology has come to be undertaken under the rubric of publically funded cultural resource management studies. Yet, at the same time, the sub-disciplines of anthropology have become increasingly separated and esoteric, and many departments no longer teach traditional cultural anthropology in a four-fields curriculum.
