ABSTRACT
The use of models and analogies plays an important part in the explanation of scientific data. A recent analysis of Malete law of family relations, land and succession to property by Roberts, Campbell and Walker is essentially a statement of relationships between a community and its land, which probably recreates part of the behavioural network between some Iron Age settlements in the western Transvaal. History and ethnology are rich sources of models for explaining prehistoric data by drawing analogies. The diagram sets out a formal scheme for the hypothetico-deductive-abductive system necessary for effective scientific thought in prehistoric archaeology. The system is a hybrid system and a thought-chain relevant to any problem may commence at any point in the system. Archaeological models involve the use of known settlement location data inferred from the excavation of sites for explaining less well-known settlements.
