ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book examines how archaeological knowledge emerges from a conjunction of recovered data, the theories available for interpreting those materials, and the researcher's appreciation for the utility of those theories. It suggests that theories are essential research tools that focus attention on certain aspects of reality. Investigations are not possible without these conceptual structures, but all studies are inevitably biased by the theories that guide them. The detailed stratigraphic analyses conducted by Culture Historians at Stonehenge revealed the site's complex history, a history that researchers of different schools have to take into account when discerning astronomical alignments or shifts in meaningful structures. Culture Historians, Processualists, Marxists, and Interpretivists may well differ profoundly on the political significance of those institutions that controlled land, water, and labor in southern Mesopotamia by 3200 BC.
