This major study reflects the increasing significance of careful model formation and testing in those academic subjects that are struggling from intuitive and aesthetic obscurantism toward a more disciplined and integrated approach to their fields of study. The twenty-six original contributions represent the carefully selected work of progressive archaeologists around the world, covering the use of models on archaeological material of all kinds and from all periods from Palaeolithic to Medieval. Their common theme is archaeological generalisation by means of explicit model building, testing, modification and reapplication. The contributors seek to show that it is the use of certain models in particular ways that defines archaeology as the practice of one discipline, with a set of general tenets that are as applicable in Peru as in Persia, Australia as Alaska, Sweden as Scotland, on material from the second millennium B.C. to the second millennium A.D. They assert that careful model formulation within archaeology and the cautious exchange and testing of models within and beyond the discipline provides the only route to the formation of the common, internationally valid body of theory which defines a vigorous and coherent discipline and distinguishes it from being a collection of merely regionally applicable special cases.

Table of Contents:
1. Models and Paradigms in Contemporary Archaeology D.L. Clarke 2. The Methodological Debate in Contemporary Archaeology: A Model J.N. Hill 3. Contemporary Model Building: Paradigms and the Current State of Palaeolithic Research L.R. Binford 4. Early Phases of Human Behaviour: Models in Lower Palaeolithic Archaeology G.LL. Isaac 5. Research Design Models S.G.H. Daniels 6. A Model for Classification and Typology J.N. Hill and R.K. Evans 7. What Mean These Stones? Ethno-taxonomic Models and Archaeological Interpretations in the New Guinea Highlands J.P. White and D.H. Thomas 8. Introduction to Imaginary Models for Archaeological Scaling and Clustering Leroy Johnson, Jr. 9. Models, Methods and Techniques for Seriation G.L. Cowgill 10. Computer Models as Tools for Archaeological Hypothesis Formation J.E. Doran 11. Initial Model Formulation In Terra Incognita C.F.W. Higham 12. Socio-economic and Demographic Models for the Neolithic and Bronze Ages of Europe A.G. Sherratt 13. Ecosystem Models and Demographic Hypotheses: Predation and Prehistory in North America P.F. Wilkinson 14. Energy and Ecology: Thermodynamic Models in Archaeology W. Shawcross 15. Ethno-historic and Ecological Settings for Economic and Social Models of an Iron Age Society: Valldalen, Norway K. Odner 16. Ethno-archaeological Models and Subsistence Behaviour in Arnhem Land C. Schrire 17. A Computer Simulation Model of Great Basin Shoshonean Subsistence and Settlement Patterns D.H. Thomas 18. A Territorial Model for Archaeology: A Behavioural and Geographical Approach M.R. Jarman 19. Set Theory Models: An Approach to Taxonomic and Locational Relationships J. Litvak King and R. Garcia Moll 20. Locational Models and the Site of Lubaantún: A Classic Maya Centre N.D.C. Hammond 21. A Provisional Model of an Iron Age Society and its Settlement System D.L. Clarke 22. Locational Models of Transvaal Iron Age Settlements R.J. Mason 23. Locational Models and the Study of Romano-British Settlement I.R. Hodder 24. Settlement and Land Use in the Prehistory and Early History of Southern England: A Study Based on Locational Models A. Ellison and J. Harriss 25. Models in Medieval Studies E.M. Jope 26. Scientific Inquiry and Models of Socio-cultural Data Patterning: An Epilogue R.P. Chaney