ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a brief introduction to the study of hunter-gatherers and sets out why, as archaeologists, the author reads and engages with anthropological studies. It aims as an introductory text for archaeologists seeking to gain a way into the anthropological literature on hunter-gatherers. Modern hunter-gatherer groups are interesting in their own terms, but throughout the chapter, the author considers whether a study of these groups is informative for the study of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Archaeologists were therefore able to arrange modern cultures from simplest to most complex (the simplest being extant hunter-gatherers and the most complex being western Europeans). By doing so, nineteenth-century archaeologists also illustrated the stages through which cultures had developed in prehistoric times. Formal analogy is used by archaeologists who are searching for general laws, or testing hypotheses and the specific approach led to cross-cultural generalizations favoured by processual archaeology, which assesses the likelihood of similarities between societies.
