Exam 4: Explaining the Past

What involves not only the movement of ideas but also a mass shift of people that results in social and cultural changes on a large scale?

The archaeologist Bruce Trigger noted that the best way to develop a general theoretical framework will be on the basis of

Which is a means of studying human culture that gives a picture of the way in which human populations adapt to, and transform, their environments?

The systems-ecological approach involves three basic models of cultural change: (1) systems models, which are based on general systems theory; (2) cultural ecology, which provides complicated models of the interaction between human cultures and their environment; and (3) multilinear evolution, which is a theory of the cumulative evolution of culture over long periods through complex adaptations to the environment. Discuss how the systems-ecological approach allows us to focus on relationships between different components of a cultural system and between a cultural system and its environment.

In the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists were talking about a "new" archaeology, a revolutionary approach to the past that promised to overcome the many limitations of the archaeological record. In fact, this "new" archaeology, processual archaeology, failed to deliver on many of its promises. Discuss how postprocessual archaeology addresses these failings.