It's a truism in the world of archaeology that you have to specialize. The information on any given culture or process is so large these days, that to really understand and succeed as an archaeologist--meaning that you actually add insight to the archaeological record--you have to focus on one particular cultural group, or one time period, or one region, or one methodology.
The main benefit of the generalist to archaeology as a whole is the ability to make connections across cultures, to see through a wide angle lens the things in one region that echo others. You can't do that if you spend all your time, say, studying the Upper Paleolithic, the Incas, or usewear on bone tools.
Luckily, there is a happy medium: and Marc Van De Mieroop appears to have reached that in his latest book for Blackwell Publishing, The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II. In the 2007 book, Van De Mieroop discusses the various state level societies of the Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean--from Egypt to the Aegean--and provides a broad brush view of how that system worked, competing states cooperating for 300 years between 1500 and 1200 BC.
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