Introduction

Abstract

Time and change have been among the most widely discussed themes in archaeological theory, though they have varying fortunes in the vicissitudes of academic life. British and American anthropology, it has been observed, have long oscillated between history and evolution, between studying culture in its local context and in a long-term narrative. Following Steward and White rather than Kroeber and Boas, the New Archaeology's banner was evolution, and many of its theoretical goals were explicitly reductionist, for example, in viewing human actions as a local response to large-scale environmental conditions. Yet, at the same time, from its inception the New Archaeology also contained the seeds of a humanistic, historical approach (for instance, in tracing social stratification to chiefly power strategies to local, short-term political contexts).