Excerpt

Archaeology requires interaction with other disciplines as soon as it goes beyond the simple description of the surviving remnants of past cultures. The archaeologist must attempt to place his descriptions in historical sequence; to view past cultures as interacting, open systems; and to identify major changes in these systems and to specify their causes. He must then extract cross-cultural regularities that may suggest laws of human behavior and of cultural evolution. The further he moves from simple description to interpretation, the more dependent he is on other disciplines.

There are three big questions that archaeologists must ask when they turn to interpretation. We can formulate these questions as follows:

1. When did the essence of humanity emerge in nonhuman primates and what caused the change?

2. Why did agriculture and fixed settlements replace nomadic hunting and gathering?

3. What forces triggered the development of cultural complexity, including craft specialization, the development of elites, and the emergence of power based on economic, religious, and other forces?

BACK TO Emerging Syntheses in Science