ABSTRACT
Archeology requires interaction with other disciplines as soon as it goes beyond the simple description of the surviving remnants of past cultures. The archeologist must attempt to place his descriptions in historical sequence; to view past cultures as interacting, open systems; and to identify major changes in these systems and to specify their causes. He must then extract cross-cultural regularities that may suggest laws of human behavior and of cultural evolution. The further he moves from simple description to interpretation, the more dependent he is on other disciplines. People must also look to the humanities to understand the motivations of past cultures. Archaeology is an excellent example of an activity which integrates contributions from a whole series of interrelated disciplines. This is, of course, what the Santa Fe Institute hopes to do on an even larger scale.
