Science, Style and the Study of Community Structure: An Example from the Central Mississippi River Valley

The general purpose of this book is to help in the building and refining of theory and methods for studying the past. In one sense, empirical results about the past are by-products of theory construction, part of the iterative process in which we evaluate how well our explanatory system can account for the material world. This study presents just one part in the overall sequences of studies that address the processes that produce variability in stylistic frequencies. It is through this kind of continued experimentation that we will enjoy the fruit of knowledge building: archaeology as an historical science.