Search results for ""author michael brian schiffer""

Many technologies begin life as someone's vision of an ambitious, perhaps audacious, technology that is expected to have a revolutionary impact on consumers-whether families, companies, or societies. However, if this highly touted technology fails 'prematurely' at some point in its life history, it becomes a spectacular flop. Employing a behavioral perspective, this book presents a sample of twelve spectacular flops encompassing the past three centuries-ranging from the world's first automobile to the nuclear-powered bomber. Because technologies may fail from many different causes, spectacular flops pose a special challenge to the author's long-term project of furnishing generalizations about technological change. Instead of constructing generalizations that apply to all spectacular flops, this book provides limited generalizations that pertain to particular groups of technologies bounded by parameters such as 'long-term development projects' and 'one-off projects.' The reader need have no prior familiarity with the technologies because basic principles are introduced as needed.

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Originally published by Academic Press in 1976, this book has become a foundational statement in archaeological methodology and has had a lasting impact on the discipline. As Michael Schiffer writes in his new prologue, the work 'played a vital role in establishing as fundamental the behavioral perspective in archaeology.' (Must be distinguished from the collection of articles by Schiffer published by University of Utah Press called Behavioral Archaeology: First Principles.) From the Prologue to the Percheron Press Edition: 'Clearly many issues raised in Behavioral Archeology, as well as its principal ideas, retain considerable relevance for the practice of archaeology. Thus I present this reprinted edition of Behavioral Archeology, warts and all, in the hope that readers will enjoy engaging the ideas that played a pivotal role in establishing as fundamental the behavioral perspective in archaeology.'

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