ABSTRACT
Methodology was important to cultural historians; controlled, stratified excavation was perfected by that generation of archaeologists. During the 1940s and 1950s, there were debates about what other questions can be asked through archaeology. Julian Steward suggested that cultural change could be a bigger part of archaeological investigation. Archaeology was not the only discipline to benefit from an influx of new thinking resulting from the gi bill. Computer technology was developing, which allowed for the processing of large amounts of data - larger evidentiary sets than could be easily manipulated by hand. Archaeology was uniquely situated to contribute to the growing anthropological interests in the mechanisms of social change, cultural ecology, and the development of social complexity. The article was compelling, and Binford gathered around him a following of bright young graduate students and influenced a generation of scholars to take up the new archaeology. Zooarchaeology and Paleoethnobotany, the study of plant remains, developed rapidly under processual archaeology.
