Excerpt

Increasingly, interdisciplinary research teams are coming together to try to establish regularities, over space and time, in the complex system that is the human phenomenon (see, for example, Kohler et al., chapter 6 in this volume). Although vocabulary and tools have changed, the questions that animate this research program bear striking similarity to those pursued by nineteenth-century intellectuals in a quest to establish universal laws shaping human affairs. In fact, that very quest provided the impetus for the emergence of what would later become distinct disciplines in the social and historical sciences, including anthropology1 and sociology (see Carneiro 2003; Harris 2001; Trigger 2006).

Why, then, is this interdisciplinary research program often met with skepticism, or even outright resistance, within anthropology?

In this chapter I provide a brief outline of developments in the history of anthropology leading to this state of affairs, in the hope of alleviating misunderstanding between those who support the interdisciplinary research program and those who oppose it. As a practical contribution toward this end, I then provide an overview of key established resources for systematic comparative approaches to the archaeological record. I conclude by discussing challenges and opportunities in this area at the interface with recent developments in related archaeological practice.

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