ABSTRACT
The day-to-day work of the archaeologist is to dig up remains of peoples and their cultures, to map, measure, describe, count, and in his report to make an interpretation of what life was like "then." But an important amount of archaeological work also consists of comparing the reports in order to place the cultures in a historical and developmental context. This chapter explores that greater sophistication among more archaeologists about the actual nature of culture is what is necessary and that this sophistication can be achieved by a better acquaintance with some ethnological findings. Ethnology has been changing its character lately, and today many ethnologists are not interested in historical reconstructions. It does not follow, therefore, that an archaeologist can go down the hall to the nearest ethnologist and find out what he needs to know. The ethnologist might be a psychologist or a functionalist. But the archaeologist could go to the library.
