ABSTRACT
Tracing patterns of historical relatedness, typically termed "phylogeny," is both central to historical science and a distinctive feature of it. The initial insight that led to the formation of historical science was that resemblance was a function of relatedness. With hindsight, it is apparent that the Linnaean taxonomic classification, developed in the second half of the eighteenth century and central to biology ever since, unconsciously embodied this notion. Distinguishing among the three kinds of resemblance—relatedness, common function, and chance—is thus a crucial methodological component of historical science. In archaeology, cultural as well as genetic transmission plays a role in inheritance, and transmission is spread out, albeit unevenly, over a period of time instead of at the moment of conception. Traditionally, if intuitively, archaeologists have solved the problem posed by chance resemblance by focusing attention on "types"—sets of attributes—rather than on single attributes.
