Teaching from the Textbooks: An Archaeology of the Current Historical Moment

On the last day of class, my advanced theory students would break up into small groups and each have the option of choosing one such old anthropology textbook from the box of them that I had selected from the shelf. They would then spend the next 15 to 20 minutes exploring the book (looking at the table of contents, skimming chapters, reading the introduction, etc.) in order to answer three basic questions...Truthfully, I have never had quite so much fun, nor gotten so much out of, teaching from a textbook.