If we accept the premise that there are consistent, similar and recurrent structural patterns to be found in the archaeological record wherever and in whatever condition we may find this, and that these patterns are the systematic result of human behavior in a previous era, and if we accept as well that much of this behavior is capable of being understood in reference to structural patterns that underlie current human behavior, then we can conclude that it is scientifically useful to employ the anthropological record in relation the archaeological record and all the data that can be derived from this to give us a better understanding of human patterns in the past. We really have no way of avoiding this issue or otherwise trying to fit the archaeological record of the past into some kind of meaningful scientific framework.

We find that superimposition of a systems framework permits us a certain degree of license and conceptual freedom in our understanding of the archaeological evidence than if we lacked such a framework, if we understand as well that the systems models we invoke are empirically realistic and consistent with both anthropological evidence and other data sets derived archaeologically. We do not need to be bound to a tight material interpretation of the data--if we cannot find it in the ground, how do we know it existed, much less prove it in any empirical sense? Darwin's theory of evolution lacked direct substantive empirical proof for well over a century after its first proposed, and yet as a general theory its validity and capacity for explanation was taken almost for granted because it fit so well what evidence did exist. It was assumed by many that speciation events occurred so slowly in time that it could not be documented within a single life-time, much less a single short-term experimental study. This turned out to be an erroneous presupposition, but it did not change the final score on Darwin's theory.

The challenge we face in archaeological interpretation therefore is to develop and apply the correct systems model to the evidence, in the manner that we are led at least to what can be called a general theory of human prehistory. If we can apply the correct models to our archaeological problem sets, then a general interpretive framework should be available for the contextualization of otherwise disparate archaeological samples. On the other hand, it still remains quite true that even if a general theory can be worked out, there would be much leftover in the archaeological record that lacked any non-arbitrary explanatory reference points upon the relevant level of generality-specificity that would sufficiently explain the historical sequence of events that determined a particular sites formation.

The model that I propose in this book relating archaeological systems theory to anthropological or human systems theory in a more general sense, is the model that I have come to term eco-cultural evolution from primitive proto-cultural human systems into highly developed, technologically sophisticated and well-integrated civilizations. I use the term "evolution" because there have been definite evolutionary transformations and processes of selection involved in its natural and cultural history. But by so naming it "evolution" I hope to afford any direct analogies to the use of the term evolution in biology. While there is considerable overlap and some level of interdependency and constraint between the two forms of evolution, as they co-occur simultaneously on different levels of integration, it remains true that these levels are, in terms of their integrative and emergent properties, distinct from one another and not sufficiently reducible from the one to the other.

The general theory of eco-cultural evolution that I invoke has several different models at several levels that are interrelated and that serve to explicate the general theory as a whole. These models are important components of the theoretical edifice that I seek to build in this work, and therefore cannot be forgotten or left out of the final construction. I had hoped to achieve a single formulaic paradigm of principles that would encapsulate this general theory, but I have found that either human phenomena is of such a level of complexity that it resists even simple single-law generalization, or else we have just not yet arrived at the level of understanding or knowledge that we yet need to produce such generalizations.

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I have come to elaborate what I construe to be a set of interrelated conceptual models that I seek to put to the service of archaeological systems theory. Systems theory, particularly in its application to natural patterning that is the provenance of scientific inquiry and research, must be seen as a means of framing and interrelating different forms of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, with the presupposition that there occur underlying structural patterns of order within naturally variegated patterns of phenomena, upon whatever level of integration and analysis we are dealing with. It has become my experience in dealing with systems theory that, though a systems framework as a meat-scientific and heuristic form of modeling, can provide general directional markers and operational constructs and procedures that have wide applicability to a range of cross-disciplinary interests, systems theory must be shaped and made to fit the disciplinary constraints and considerations that pertain to different areas of science and their knowledge systems. Furthermore, an uncritical blanket approach of a general systems framework to any or every different area of scientific knowledge is counter-productive in the long run. Systems theory demands the development of general theory that is pertinent to the area and level of knowledge that is being treated, and this general theory in general serves to explain in a parsimonious and realistic manner the emergent or integrative properties pertinent to a specific level of systems integration in nature, and as well the analytical techniques for understanding systems and their components at their respective levels of integration. General Systems theory therefore is no substitute for true general theory in any area of knowledge, but if used and adapted wisely, it should assist in the development and recognition of general principles pertinent to the area of knowledge under consideration. General systems theory provides a metalogical framework for understanding natural patterns and processes that to some extent circumvent the ideological ramifications that such knowledge systems, as symbolic systems that are culturally constructed, are prone to. It provides a common framework for the interrelation of theory and knowledge across a wide range of disciplines and knowledge areas.

We may say therefore that any field of scientific inquiry that is based upon a natural area of integrative patterning of phenomena, has its own possible theoretical constructs that are potentially general and comprehensive. We do not claim to explain physical patterning in the universe by invoking biological theories, nor are general theories of relativity sufficient for explaining biological systems, even though biological systems are composed of molecules and atoms and are therefore subject to the same physical constraints as are any non-biological system.. Neither is it sufficient to invoke evolutionary models to explain human cultural patterning or phenomena. We have arrived at a relatively comprehensive theory in biology that is based upon Darwinian evolution. We have not arrived at a general theory of human systems. Such a general theory, when achieved, should be expected to provide a unifying framework that permits theoretical explanation and empirical experimentation to proceed in a coordinated manner. At the level of human systems theory, such a comprehensive theory should be expected to sufficiently unify knowledge bases across a series of disciplines.

I have in this work taken up the challenge of developing general human systems theory and applying this theory to a particular discipline of human systems, namely archaeological system theory. I take a general theory of archaeology to be different fundamentally from a general theory of cultural anthropology or of psychology or sociology, sufficient to its own particular empirical knowledge base. At the same time, from a general systems framework, I take this archaeological systems theory to be necessarily coordinate with systems theoretic approaches that are successful developed in other disciplines of study of human patterning and reality. We expect non-contradiction and agreement of explanatory frames of reference between different disciplines and knowledge systems that deal with human cultural patterning and process.

Systems theory in general, and general theory pertinent to various knowledge systems, if successfully applied, tend to lead to productive results. We may say that all natural systems are stochastically (or probabilistically) underdetermined, chaotically complex and tend in the long run toward maximization of entropy. The structural organization and life-trajectory of any natural system can be fully explained by the concatenation of component systems and their integrative organization. There is nothing deliberative or predetermined in an absolute a priori sense about these systems. They arose in the past as they continue to arise in the present as the result of chance occurrence of complex event structures. Nevertheless, when such event structures perchance occur, then the formation of a particular kind of system, at a particular level, is an inevitable or probable outcome. It is not the role or purpose of science to ask unanswerable questions about ultimate states of reality. Science must accept the ultimately nihilistic conception that "God rolled the dice" with all of physical reality.

Consideration of human systems, particularly Archaeological systems that deal with the human past in a scientific manner, are inherently problematic in this regard to the naturalistic basis of systems theory. This is because humans with their willful intelligence are always seen to be self-determining actors upon the stage of culture history. They appear to role the dice every day in relation to their outcomes and consequences. At the same time, it must be understood that the deliberative factor of human behavior is itself partially determining and only underdetermined product of other cultural and natural factors that constrain and create human beings in the first place. This issue does not even broach the problem of the inherent relativity of our own knowledge, especially when it concerns knowledge about ourselves.

Historical explanation that is rooted in human action and willpower, in human arbitrariness and planning, is not irrelevant to archaeological systems theory--it only tends to muddle our models and demonstrates that human systems, unlike almost any other natural system known to exist, do not exactly behave the laws of nature or even the dynamics of culture in any exact or predictable sense. If general systems principles apply to human systems, they do so only in an inexact and always historically undetermined manner. No great general or humble human being ever began a significant plan that, in the long run, did not lead to unintended consequences.

In regard to general theory relating to human systems, especially in archaeological terms of the past, we must see that we have always several alternative levels of explanation that we can invoke and that play a potential part in our modeling of the past:

1. Individual human behavior and actions.

2. Cultural patterns and processes.

3. Social group and intergroup behavior patterns.

4. Natural ecological, evolutionary and environmental patterns and constraints.

Analytically, 2 and 3 above (cultural and social patterning) are often conflated or used interchangeably. There are no known human groups lacking some kind of cultural pattern, nor is there any cultural formation that is not defined with in a social framework. In fact, all these levels are naturally interrelated and can be conflated and therefore confused in our model building. It has become important to systematically analyze the differences and interrelationships between these levels of explanation of human systems if we are to over come some of the fundamental dilemmas and dichotomies that plague conceptual development, general theory and model building and testing in human systems. These dichotomies include analytic versus synthetic, individual vs. social, historical vs. functional or structural, etc.

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Archaeologists do not exactly dig up the human past, nor do they even directly study this past. Archaeologists dig up what I would call material symbols of the past, or collective representations of the past. These symbols are both mirrors for the archaeologists own sense of history, as well as a window for vision upon some lost sense of history. The rub here is to realize that the archetype of a symbol, or rather its prototype, is really the stone tool. The multi-purpose function of such an implement is really the pragmatic function of any symbol. Its material form is the normal form any symbol must take before it becomes recognizable and useful, especially in a social context that invites sharing and competition at the same time. Its significance to the possessor, the user, the benefactor or the potential victim, is the evaluative and normative significance that any symbol conveys through its social action and performance. The fact that it can be carried away from where it was made, kept, and used and reused to meet a variety of different challenges, is the same multipurpose, metaphorical identity that any symbol would assume. The intelligence and pattern-recognition capabilities required to effectively make, use and abuse a stone tool are precisely the same required for any other kind of symbolic behavior and response. If we are to seek a touchstone for the psychic unity of humankind, then surely it takes the form of a stone tool.

The romantic vision of traditional anthropology, one that was shared by the Americanist culture historians, is that there existed out there in the remote field some perfect sense of a "culture" by which its people, as "culture bearers" could be defined in clearly monothetic terms. They were monothetically competitive, or they were egalitarian, or they were Dionysian, or megalomaniacal. For all their bloodletting in the arena, I doubt the Romans ever imagined themselves as barbaric, or as anything other than civilized. For all their military prowess and martial capacities, I doubt the Romans ever pictured themselves as anything but peace loving members of the Pax Romana.

The advance of the science of anthropology, including archaeology, has being the gradual awakening to the alternative and variable possibilities of human culture, its composite and polythetic structure, and the very humanistic realization that the same people could be both good and bad, cooperative and competitive, hunting/gathering, peace-loving and truculent, all at the same time. And this seems to be the most remarkable aspect about human culture especially from the standpoint of a universal past. It has been its remarkable plasticity and adaptability that has permitted humankind to shape and reshape itself, using its symbols, in all different kinds of seemingly contradictory ways. Only humans can afford contradiction in nature, as this is what their symbols allow them to do.

Another basic "problem" in anthropology that affects cultural, archaeological, physical and linguistic models is the dichotomy between the superorganic and the individual, or between the group and the person. The same dilemma has affected the history of ecological theory in the biological sciences, as well as the history of evolutionary thought, in much the same way. This is really a hen and egg, or analytic-synthetic dilemma. All systems are analytically reducible to the actions and interactions of their component parts. It is people after all who bear and represent culture through their symbolically mediated relations with one another and their natural environments. At the same time, all integrated systems exhibit emergent properties that can be said to be synthetic and synergistically greater than the sum of their parts. The challenge therefore in our theory is to be able to step back from both the hen and the egg, and as Niels Bohr has so correctly insisted, see them in a complementary fashion. We cannot have one without the other, and therefore both must be taken into sufficient account in our models and representations.

The past exists as a great unknown mist, a problem is that Archaeologists are both theoretically and methodologically challenged by this mist to explain the "arti-facts" that they have dug up from the ground. They are doubly challenged, because they cannot directly talk to the people who made and used and discarded these artifacts. The best they can do is to find anthropological analogies in the ethnographic record, and to apply the power of their own reason and logic, which is never inconsiderable but always prone to false ideological commitments and statements of untested belief.

The human past presents itself therefore in its best and truest form, as a scientific problem that it is the challenge of Archaeology to solve through its systematic application of its empirical methods that are focused upon excavation and assemblage/artifact analysis. Archaeologists, if they are to be true to their professional goals and identity, really has no choice in this affair. As intractable as this challenge may seem to some, archaeology is not well served in the guise of some other disciplinary calling. Archaeology cannot be accomplished through literary criticism, historical scholarship, or even ethnographic sojourns abroad--it can only be discovered by digging into the common ground of humankind.

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In the development of archaeological systems theory in the course of writing this work, it has come to my mind that when framed in human systems theory in general, if the working presuppositions about such systems are correct, then they may be safely if not uncritically applied to the archaeological record in a satisfactory manner for the interpretation of evidence, if no supporting evidence exists that directly demonstrates such systemic relationships, and only as long as no counter-evidence exists which would contradict such models. Application of archaeological systems theory, if appropriately contextualized and developed, offers to archaeologists the possibility of reaching beyond the direct interpretive framework that is offered by their material evidence in a coordinated and objective manner. In other words, systems theory offers to archaeologists the promise and possibility of being able to extend their theoretical models and interpretations to a larger context of human knowledge about the past than would otherwise be available to them. Such systems theory brings archaeology to the development of general hypothetico-deductive theory that has scientific efficacy beyond the bounds of the material evidence itself. This is especially true if and when enough ethnographic and ethnological and other human systems knowledge can be directly or indirectly applied to the interpretation of the archaeological context. We may safely generalize from the empirical observation of current, extant human systems, regardless of historical particularities and cultural relativities, to past human systems, if we are able to understand and adequate control and account for the process of development and historical patterning that do occur in systems, and the differentials that may exist between different systems as the result of time. Furthermore, the adoption of a general systems model that is appropriate for archaeological research design and interpretation permits us to potentially experiment and explore data and to discover new sources of data in ways that are suggested by the heuristic and hypothetical models that we derive and develop from such theory.

I have attempted in this work to provide archaeologists with just such a general theoretical approach developed within a metasystems and natural systems theoretic framework. I have sought to accomplish this at several levels of analytical and synthetic organization of knowledge that I felt to be appropriate and necessary to the elaboration of such a general theory. As reiterated before, a systems approach without a general theory that aims at some degree of comprehensiveness, is in essence a methodology without a theoretical focus or reason for being. Such approaches are not without analytic and heuristic value in archaeological research, but they are not a sufficient substitute for real theory. Real theory must be defined, and tested, within a systems framework, as systems models provide constraints and contexts for the articulation of theory that cannot be violated but that can be exploited.

In general, the models presented in this work can be summarized as follows. This work is divided into three parts. The first part follows the development of key ideas and problems in the history of archaeology, particularly as these have been developed by key thinkers in the history of archaeology.

The second part aims at the elucidation of key conceptual frameworks and models that are implicit to and underlie basic explanatory problems in archaeological knowledge. Conceptually, I take Archaeology's central conceptual foundations to be: the basic problems of archaeological relativity and "arti-factuality" of knowledge; the problem of time, change and continuity; the problem of culture and cultural patterning; the problem of history and historical event structures; the problem of systemic process and the structural dynamics of human prehistory.

Within the second part I elaborate a set of basic theoretical models of prehistoric systems, including: the processes of cultural anthropogenesis; eco-cultural adaptation; cultural mediation, selection and transformation; cultural equilibriation and integration; cultural evolution; transculturation; the rise and fall of civilizational complexes.

I then attempt to contextualize these sets of models within a basic human systems framework that attempts to elucidate the patterning of human cultural adaptation at the level of primary culture, including what can be called proto-cultural systems of: religion; symbolization; language; social organization and structuration. The attempt is then made to tie these various aspects of primitive human systems into a metasystemic model of basic human cultural patterning.

I attempt thereby to apply these models to a larger framework of eco-evolutionary development that looks at the biological and wider ecological-environmental consequences of human cultural patterning upon the environment. It deals with: basic issues of a culturally adapted model of eco-evolutionary systems; social ecology as a natural animal system; human biological ecology; human social ecology; and human symbolic ecology.

Finally, I attempt to operationalize archaeological systems models in a larger context of other kinds of knowledge systems, and deals with the basic methodological problems of: cross-correlational analysis; cross-corroborative analysis in interdisciplinary frameworks; comparative archaeology in a comparative anthropological framework; a hologeistic approach to global archaeology and the general application of various areas of natural systems theory and metasystems science to archaeological research problems and methods.

The third part attempts to finish the work in an anti-climactic manner by providing a set of essays upon archaeology that deals with a miscellaneous variety of topics relating to archaeological systems theory and knowledge. The aim in these essays is to explore and extend the use of the essay, as developed by Francis Bacon, to particular archaeological problems, and thereby to establish a kind of Batesonian metalogue between the form and style of the essay and its content and larger significance in archaeological systems theory. By so doing, I hope to invite into the critical dialogue of archaeological systems theory a wider dialectic from the post-everything crowd of critical archaeology, with the aim of expanding the constructivist paradigm, largely misinterpreted and misused by everyone, to the application of useful functional models of archaeological systems.

All of this work seems somehow to have been in lieu of a central and unequivocal theory of archaeological systems, which should be contained within a single essay, or at most, a single journal paper, rather than in an extended multi-thematic monograph. Nevertheless, this work seems to me to be preparatory and prerequisite to the refinement and true development of a genuinely comprehensive theory of archaeological systems.

As an anthropologist, I do not claim to be able to solve all the problems or be the final answer to issues that only archaeologists can ask and answer for themselves. I have sought to apply systems theory as I have developed this previous to the general problem of archaeological knowledge in the world, with the hope of demonstrating a higher level of integration and problem solving that steps beyond the arena of the normal dialectic of archaeological discourse. Perhaps, in the process, something new and unexpected that we didn't know before will come of such an effort.

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Before proceeding, it is important to ask basic questions about our models and their frameworks. First, what is systems theory in general? Secondly, what is a natural system? Thirdly, what is a human system? Finally, what is an archaeological system? Archaeologists must also ask the question in general "Why systems theory?" in archaeology. To a great extent, they must seek the answer to this question for themselves in terms of their own archaeological interests and excavations. At the same time, systems theory must be something more than a trivial catchall that is applied to everything but may mean nothing in and of itself. Systems theory itself must be made explainable and available for operationalization in archaeological research design, applicable to a broad number of archaeological contexts, of which it is potentially capable. An answer to basic questions such as these may serve to satisfy the curiosity and overcome the skepticism of archaeologists who are used to the tried and the true. If they consider themselves to be scientists, and if they believe that there is to be found in their piles of data some form of structural patterning that is objectively inherent to the data itself, and not just the projective organization of our own subjective frames of reference, then they must eventually come to take some form of systems theory into account, as all sciences must eventually reckon with the fundamental issues and problems that a systems perspective entails for their areas of understanding.

What is Systems Theory in General? Systems theory developed primarily as a result of certain outcomes of World War II and the rise of cybernetics, information theory, game theory, theory of automata, and related developments in mathematics, computing and other scientific and technological advances, especially in aviation, rocket science and space programs. It can be said that it had not single clear starting point, and that it has thus evolved synthetically and eclectically. It has always been inherently cross-disciplinary, and its possible operations have found a wide range of application. At the same time, much of systems theory and related lines of inquiry has remained for the most part interpretive and lacking either a central theoretical framework or an empirical ground of its own as a scientifically based knowledge system. It has been one of the "new sciences" that has emerged apart from the traditional disciplinary articulation of departments and academic programs delineated somewhere along the lines of the "Arts and Sciences."

Systems theory can be said to be the theory of the structural patterning of events and phenomena that occur in reality, or that may possibly occur in hypothetical space and time. What has become evident in the elaboration of systems theory in several fields of study has been the degree to which similar pattern phenomena occur at different levels of the stratified articulation of reality. Structurally, many systems that are otherwise very different and unrelated, may be considered to be isomorphic in terms of the patterning such systems exhibit. Naturally occurring systems may be said to be self-organizing structures that arise stochastically, or probabilistically, as the likely result of the chance concatenation of complex events. The structural patterning of all systems can be said to be accounted for on the basis of the underlying or implicit rules that govern the operational order, or mechanics, of the system and that determine its transformations, or dynamics, over time and space. Thus, systems theory aims to excoriate and comprehend the underlying rules that govern the function and behavior of systems at whatever level they are applied or found to exist upon.

What is a Natural System? Natural systems can be said to be any phenomenal patterning found to occur in the real world that can be attributed certain structural properties that are fundamentally non-random, semi-deterministic, or isotrope in order.

We distinguish the epi-phenomenal aspects of a natural system from "noise" or clutter that lacks any kind of order. Natural systems can be said therefore to be fundamentally anti-entropic to the extent that they are order creating, order maintaining processes. They must therefore accomplish some kind of "work" which in its simplest mechanical definition is the organized transfer or retention of energy from a high state of entropy to a lower state of entropy. It is understood that all systems tend naturally to seek the highest state of entropy, or maximum disorder, possible, over time. Work is directive energy expended to reverse this natural tendency. Such work is by definition less than one hundred percent efficient, and we can see therefore that all natural systems must obey the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. There is another facet of natural systems that is overlooked in connection to its mechanical energetics, and this is the principle that all systems, in order to perform work, must do so in an organized or ordered manner, and this order or organization is the basis for informational patterning that is inherent to such systems. It is at this point that information theory overlaps basic energy theory, in the sense that entropy can be equated to "noise" that tends to interfere with efficient transmission or articulation of information. Information in this sense can be defined as any non-random pattern or order of events or "signals," in either time or space (in fact, always both simultaneously) that has some measure of predictive, or determinative, value, such that it permits us to make probabilistic statements about the future state-development of such patterns.

While such a model of a natural system may seem too mechanical, the model of mechanics that is adopted for natural systems theory is not the classical Newtonian model, but rather one that is rooted in the understanding of: 1. Quantum mechanics. 2. Nonlinear control systems and dynamics. 3. Complexity or Chaos theory. 4. Relativity theory. The classical theory of relativity states that, if two systems move uniformly relative to one another, the laws of mechanics for both systems are the same. We can extend this theory of relativity to dynamic systems, and state that if two systems change uniformily relative to one another, the laws of nonlinear mechanics apply to both systems in similar ways. At this point, we have the basis for understanding the ordering of change processes in nature that appear analogous to one another, if we can assume that both systems are being governed by the same mechanical principles. The two systems in question do not have to be homologically related to one another as a function of time--in fact, we expect that mechanically relative systems are not ordered sequentially in the same state-path trajectory, or history. We expect that different systems that occur simultaneously time and place, must be at least only directly related, but subject in theory to the same laws of mechanics. If we find to co-occurring systems that do not appear to change in similar ways, then we must investigate our mechanical models that we apply to such systems. With complex and nonlinear models, we may understand that the outcomes of the same operating sets of mechanical principles can be different, depending upon the contravening variables that subsequently shape the state-path trajectory of such systems. Such systems are said to be underdetermined in that we cannot make precise predictions of future states based only on the knowledge of the current state. We may at best only apply probabilities to such outcomes, and seek to understand the range of variation possible. We may say that all natural systems are essentially non-linear dynamic systems. We may contrast natural systems, as a subclass of real systems, which are the subject of science and applied mathematics, from abstract systems, which are non-real systems, and which are only the subject of systems of abstract conceptualization and pure mathematics. We may also distinguish as a class of non-natural real systems, those applied or artificial systems that are the product of human design, which for the most part have been linear in conception and function.

It is clear that archaeological systems theory can be understood in precisely the same manner. If we understand the universal cultural mechanics and dynamics that govern different cultural systems in different places and times, then we can usefully study and compare the patterning produced by these different systems to determine the extent to which the same mechanical principles can be said to apply. It is not necessary therefore to invoke or assume homologous relationships if we can assume that both cultural systems were operating relative to the same sets of cultural mechanical principles. It is not necessary to know the exact names of the agencies involved in the deposition of any particular site, for instance, the cast of characters upon the historical stage, to understand the unfolding pattern of the drama itself. Application of systems theory does not obviate the value or importance of historical connection, but it only relativizes this within a larger framework of scientific interpretation.

What is a Human System? A human system can therefore be defined as a subclass of natural systems. It is a real system in the sense that it involves real physical phenomena occurring in time and space. Human systems are an interesting subset of natural systems, because they are systems that exhibit some measure of self-awareness and therefore of self-determination of patterning and outcomes. To such an extent, they can be said to be knowledge-based systems, if we define knowledge as a form of awareness about the informational patterning of the world. They therefore share features of derivative applied and autonomous or artificial systems that are the product of human systems functioning. Thus human systems are unique in nature, and are not exactly modeled by biological systems theory or other kinds of natural systems. Strictly speaking, biological systems are not subject to patterns of self-determination to the extent that human cultural systems can be said to be.

In general, we say that human systems are fundamentally culturally patterned systems, and "culture" is the structurally ordered patterning that is characteristic of all human systems. Explanation for the rise and development of human systems becomes, in essence, explanation for the rise and development of human cultural patterning. Cultural mechanics and dynamic can be said to be complex and multiply determined systems that admit a great deal of variability of state patterning. It is true that the principles that can be said to govern such systems are themselves derivative and variable in application. Furthermore, they can be said to be "conditional" principles that apply differently to different sets of circumstances and that lead to different kinds of outcomes as a result. It is apparent therefore that a calculus of cultural state-path behavior or culture history will not be the same affair as a relatively simple and straight-forward calculus of physical objects like bullets and artillery shells flying through the air. Nevertheless, the science of anthropology is expected, and should be expected, to be able to define in a clear manner this kind of complex calculus of cultural change and process.

What is a Archaeological System? Within the same framework, an archaeological system can therefore be said to be a subclass of anthropological or human systems, and represents basically a kind of human knowledge system that is derived from and relates to the depositional patterns of cultural and human remains in the ground, and that refers indirectly to the human cultural systems that created these depositional patterns in the first place. Unlike other kinds of anthropological knowledge systems, such as ethnography, Archaeology cannot query its data-base, and archaeological "other" or ego can be said to be a voiceless, anonymous informant whose behavior only indirectly contributed to the archaeological record. The central problem of the archaeological record can be said to be the dimension of the prehistoric past, or rather a past that lacks any other kind of documentation or recorded or living memory than that found within the ground. An archaeological system is therefore a specialized kind of knowledge system that has as its objective the understanding of human cultural systems, particularly as these are a function of the past and of stratigraphic deposition in the past. It achieves this understanding through discovery and analysis of its database, along with all lines of secondary evidence pertinent to this database, and the modeling of the inferable and hypothetical cultural systems that can be based upon inference from such data and deduction from the framework of an applicable systems model or construct.

It is clear in understanding archaeological systems that the inferred mechanics of such cultural systems are construed in terms of some kind of functionalist frame of reference that relates the presence, form and deformation of artifact assemblages to the purposes that the original people who held these artifacts pursued. A functional model of cultural systems usually explains the presence and form of cultural objects and institutions in terms of the utilitarian or pragmatic purposes that such objects may have served in the original setting of the culture that possessed and used these objects. A functionalist model furthermore explains cultural integration and articulation on the basis of its adaptive efficacy and efficiency in meeting the energy or survival requirements of the society that is engaged in using these artifacts. In general, archaeological systems theory are not only functional, but their functionalism, however defined, always implies as well a structuralist explanation of social and cultural order--that there are general organizing principles underlying the patterning of cultural process that can be functionally explained.

Furthermore, all such models as tend very strongly to be materialist models as well--materialist being explained in the general sense that people are conditioned by their material environments, and largely serve these material environments, in their time. A materialist argument, unlike an idealist argument, also assumes that human motivation and rationalization are often shaped, indeed determined ultimately by their material condition and well being. We must contrast a materialist argument in archaeological theory from what can be called an essentialist interpretation as well. The former implies that the structure and patterning of the evidence exists within the relational and intrinsic patterning of the data itself. An essentialist lays an implicit claim that the categories of form and function transcend the exact artifact itself, and it is the "type" that the artifact represents, with a priori connotation, that is of greatest importance to understand.

If we are to answer the question of why systems theory in archaeology, we must understand how archaeological systems are the by-products of many different natural forces that converge in the context of the site and the assemblage to produce the non-random patterning that occurs at such sites. Any archaeological site can be said to exist as a "metasystem" that is the composite result of many different systemic forces interacting with one another. Such metasystems by definition resist simple descriptive explanation upon almost every level of analysis. Behind all this, we would not be considering the problem of archaeological systems if there had not existed any predecessorial human cultures that created the foundations for those systems. Archaeological understanding, as an empirical knowledge system, has in a sense no choice but to adopt a systems perspective upon its own knowledge base and its implications in a wider context. Systems theory serves therefore to anchor archaeological interpretive frames of reference into a larger theoretical framework concerning natural patterning and process that covers virtually all fields of scientific knowledge. Thus archaeaological systems theory provides archaeology a means of integrating its knowledge into a larger framework of comprehensive understanding that is fully coordinate with many other fields of inquiry in science.

Finally, systems modeling, being comprehensive in nature, is by definition also non-exclusive. Hence, one may adopt both an archaeological systems perspective, and any other interpretive framework one may wish, even one that is antithetical to a systems framework. Systems theory is designed to be inclusive and complementary to other forms of interpretation. In its synthetic and analytic orientation, it can effective combine very different modes of thinking about the same thing in a way that is non-contradictory. At the same time, such a framework also provides us a way of making a reasonably non-arbitrary choice between two or more competing models, based upon criteria of best fit with both the data and a systems framework itself.