ABSTRACT
All the major changes that are taking place with respect to the interpretation of archaeological data influence to some degree the relationship between archaeology and sociocultural anthropology. In the 1950s, there were two important developments in American archaeology. The first was a growing interest in cultural ecology, exemplified in works such as Caldwell's Trend and Tradition in the Prehistory of the Eastern United States. The second was the emergence of settlement archaeology, which was heralded by Willey's monograph on changing settlement patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru. New Archaeologists also tended to assume that archaeological cultures were the material remains of tightly integrated cultural systems. Indeed, the systemic perspective of the New Archaeology stressed a higher degree of integration than did traditional social anthropology. Archaeology has an important role to play not only in unraveling the complex history of the past but also in evaluating anthropological problems of major theoretical importance.
