well as the practical revolution that computerized data implied (Moberg 1969, 16–18).

In so doing, Moberg put his finger on the crisis that has been the subject of discussion since the 1960s. He maintained that the cause was a crisis in education, that new directions were needed within archaeology, and that, in the long run, new archaeologists were needed. It was necessary to educate archaeologists in theoretical knowledge and change the goals of archaeology, which implied that an archaeology based on inductive knowledge would be replaced by more objective observations. Technological development would contribute to the globalization of archaeology and the fusing of different archaeologies into one. There were two possible paths: the regional picture could be broadened to include the history of mankind in both time and space; alternatively, world archaeology could be achieved via anthropology. The idea was to determine general laws of human behavior by using deductive methods (Moberg 1969, 21).

Thus, the deductive, scientific ideal was formulated for the first time within Swedish archaeology, and Moberg’s future expectations would be realized during the 1970s. At this point, however, we should consider one of the more theoretically knowledgeable and independently active researchers in Sweden during that decade. In Stig Welinder’s dissertation on the Scanian Mesolithic (1971), there is no reference to processual archaeology and its aim to trace changes in the environment by conducting natural-historical investigations. In a later work (1975), on the other hand, there are several references to processual archaeology, or “the new archeology.” Welinder even eliminated the “a” in the combination “ae” in archaeology and was working explicitly with models and system-theoretical questions. His point of departure was the axiom that the surrounding milieu and technology were society’s base. In order to prove this axiom, it was necessary to work system theoretically. Welinder’s thinking was similar to that expressed by the English archaeologist david clarke’s ecological paradigm (Clarke 1972), and Welinder was also interested in Clarke’s view of the sociocultural system (Welinder 1975, 22). Economic, ecological, and demographic aspects composed the foundations of his model. In the long perspective of prehistory, war, trade, religion, social organization, etc. were of secondary importance. Settlement historical conditions could only be understood from an ecological perspective, and societies were interpreted as composite economic/technological complexes (Welinder 1975, 20).

Welinder sometimes doubted the possibility of creating laws for diffusion and social structures, since culture-historical processes and human societies are not repeated in time and space. In his opinion, the model sometimes deviated from the models normally used by the new archeologists (Welinder 1977, 15). Neither could it be used as an explanatory model. Instead, its strength lay in its description of basic structures in the cultural landscape. On a later occasion (Welinder 1979, 24), however, he implied that if it were possible to formulate such laws, then the preconditions could be found within demography. This archaeology could be called “human paleoecology,” “ecological archaeology,” or “population anthropology” (Welinder 1979, 25). Welinder’s thinking has been used as an example of the tendencies of the 1970s, but it should be noted that they are not representative of the subject as a whole. Alongside them there was a traditional, inductive, and typological archaeology. However, Welinder’s archaeology, to a certain extent, was representative of a more theoretically oriented archaeology.

Thus, archaeology during the 1970s became more natural-scientific in character. Attempts were made to reduce the preconditions for the formation of society to a single basic norm. The decisive factor was the relationship between man and his surrounding environment, with the latter constituting the basic variable. This line of thinking was linked to the positivistic ideals that were predominant within Swedish society as a whole. Generally speaking, the political model for Swedish society has been characterized by standardization in a positivistic spirit.

Archaeology Since the 1980s

During the 1980s, the reductionist viewpoint was called into question, not only within the