ABSTRACT
To the extent that any society must interact with other societies in consumption and production, it is necessary for archaeologists to consider the larger system of relationships in an account of its reproduction. This raises both empirical and theoretical issues in the study of prehistory. How interdependent were prehistoric societies at different points in time, and how extensive was the larger system of relationships into which these societies entered? Perhaps more importantly, what conceptual tools best allow us to understand and account for variability and change in these relationships? Consideration of each of these issues leads us away from models for prehistory which treat societies or cultures as hard-bounded objects explicable in terms of local adaptive processes.
