ABSTRACT
Over the past few years a growing number of archaeologists have begun to move away from explanations derived from functional ecology, systems theory and the more naive forms of cultural materialism towards a focus on specific social and political processes and their economic functioning within defined historical circumstances. In questioning the kind of materialism that has formed the theory of the various neo-evolutionary schools, prehistorians can derive considerable encouragement from recent successes in social and economic history, in particular from the work of the French Annales school,1 whose analyses of historical processes of ‘long duration’ have enjoyed a widening and potentially integrative influence in history and other social sciences. The dawn of a true ‘social archaeology’ may now be possible.2 But in its way stands what some already see as a polarised wrangling over what should be considered ‘determinant’ in economic versus socio-political processes. This has already led to the creation of the new ‘ism’ of social determinism to characterise positions critical of the older forms of matrialism.3
