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ideas of the eighteenth century and their erratic views of earliest history.

During the early twentieth century, archaeology lacked composite theories about the composition of and changes in different cultures. This lack does not mean that such questions were ignored—now and then references were made to religious and social conditions—but above all it was a case of diffusionist explanations and an implicit view of man and society. In general, the scientific ideal was empirically inductive with a natural-scientific undertone. Most works were descriptive and pragmatic in character.

A prehistoric petroglyph or vase painting from a Bronze Age site in Tanum, Bohuslan, Sweden, depicting three figures standing on the deck of a boat

(Hulton Getty)

Later 1900s

From the end of the 1930s until the 1950s, style-historical research (the use of style in material culture to determine the direction of historical change) in archaeology predominated. During the 1950s, several human geographers took an interest in settlement-history questions, and at the same time, several large field projects were initiated. These resulted in extensive and detailed publications of material. The inductive tendency of these works, as well as the lack of more explicit theories about human society, led to a crisis that developed into a debate on method and theory.

Criticisms burgeoned during the 1950s and 1960s, and especially influential at this time was criticism by Bertil Almgren and mats malmer. Generally speaking, their arguments pointed in two different directions: Almgren took an art-historical, hermeneutics/phenomenological direction while Malmer upheld a rationalistic, positivistic, and scientific ideal or direction. Berta Stjernquist represented a third approach. She worked with traditional typology and also with ecology and ethnicity, and she argued that it was important to give greater emphasis to factors that had influenced the material. This approach demanded theoretical and anthropological knowledge as well as situation studies like those of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (Stjernquist 1955, 2).

The renaissance of settlement historical archaeology during the 1960s is linked to that crisis/debate. Through extensive archaeological excavations, historical maps, and surveys of ancient monuments, an attempt was made to acquire knowledge of the colonization process, settlement structure, and economic conditions during, above all, the Iron Age in Sweden. Attention was given especially to economic variables. Collaboration between archaeologists and human geographers was strengthened, and even place-names and medieval fiscal material were used.

Greater emphasis was placed on local economic factors than on diffusionist factors. Economic aspects were considered to be the basis for man’s production possibilities and for living conditions. These could be studied geographically, zoologically, and geologically. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, settlement historical archaeology had been influenced by advances within quantitative methodology. In the area of analysis that has “hardware” as its point of departure, statistics were important along with diagrams and models. These were some of the preconditions for the introduction of the new archeology into Sweden during the 1970s.

As early as 1963, Carl-Axel Moberg (1915– 1987) had been in contact with lewis r. binford (b. 1929). By the end of the 1960s, Moberg was arguing that a rationalization of archaeology was necessary since the constant increase of material had given rise to a collecting and publishing crisis. In this context, he pointed out the possibilities of processual archaeology as