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Systematic comparative approaches to the archaeological record

Increasingly, interdisciplinary research teams are coming together totry to establish regularities, over space and time, in the complexsystem that is the human phenomenon. Although vocabulary and toolshave changed, the questions that animate this research program bearstriking similarity to those pursued by nineteenth-centuryintellectuals in a quest to establish universal laws shaping humanaffairs. In fact, that very quest provided the impetus for theemergence of what would later become distinct disciplines in thesocial and historical sciences, including anthropology and sociology.Why, then, is this interdisciplinary research program often met withskepticism, or even outright resistance, within anthropology?In this chapter I provide a brief outline of developments in thehistory of anthropology leading to this state of affairs, in the hopeof alleviating misunderstanding between those who support theinterdisciplinary research program and those who oppose it. As apractical contribution toward this end, I then provide an overview ofkey established resources for systematic comparative approaches to thearchaeological record. I conclude by discussing challenges andopportunities in this area at the interface with recent developmentsin related archaeological practice.