<p>Hi, I will be taking intro to archaeology and intro to human evolution next semester. Could anyone who has taken these two classes tell me if I need the current edition of the textbooks for the two classes? The older editions are much cheaper, and I was wondering if I could get away with just buying the later editions. Are the textbooks mainly for reference in those two classes, or does homework/test questions come from the textbooks? Thank you!</p>
<p>I haven’t taken either of those classes, so I can’t give you a definitive answer. However, it is a trend that for humanities and social science courses, you can usually use an older edition. That’s because you typically just read the textbook for its content, which usually doesn’t change much from edition to edition. Contrast this with engineering courses, where homework problems are often picked from the end of each chapter and it can become an issue if your edition is outdated.</p>