other scientific propositions, should be regarded as propositions to be tested (Hill and Evans 1972). As a result, there was a renewed emphasis on formal systematics, exemplified especially in the work of David Clarke (1968, 187–229), Robert Dunnell (1971), and Dwight Read (1974).

The renewed emphasis on formality and rigor led to an important methodological innovation: the use of statistics and the definition of types by attribute clustering rather than by object clustering (Spaulding 1953). The archaeologists’ traditional procedure of partitioning a body of collected material into types through visual inspection and the observation of similarities was now thought to be too intuitive. Instead, a list was to be made of all the attributes of size, shape, color, and so on that were exhibited by all the objects in a collection individually. Types were then to be defined by clusters of attributes that occurred together with a frequency greater than chance, as revealed through the use of accepted statistical measures. Such a procedure would, in theory, result in “finding the joints in nature” and would eliminate all subjective judgment and all historical interpretation from the process of classification. The attribute-clustering approach carne to be known as “agglomerative” in contrast to the older method of partitioning, which was called “divisive.”

In the beginning, the major difficulty in statistically based classification lay in the enormous number of separate calculations that had to be made in order to determine the randomness or nonrandomness of a nearly infinite number of attribute combinations. That difficulty was overcome in the 1970s, however, through the use of computers. There followed a decade of experimentation with computerized systems of classification, which, it was hoped, would finally achieve the elusive goal of automatic classification (see especially Whallon and Brown 1982). Before long, the search for automatic and absolutely “natural” classification became an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, and as such it considerably outlived the new archaeology paradigm that had given it birth.

It was eventually realized, however, that the goal of automatic classification was not practically attainable. The coding of more and more variables simply resulted in the generation of more and more types; far more than were useful for any practical purpose. Indeed, the ultimate logical outcome of computerized classification was a series of classifications in which every object constituted a separate type. In the end, there was a general, though not universal, acknowledgment that types that were not produced for any specific purpose were also not useful for any specific purpose.

As a result there has been, since the early 1980s, a considerable loss of faith in the possibilities of computerized classification and, with it, a loss of interest in the subject of classification in general. The postmodern fashion of the 1990s represented in many ways a reversion to the perspective of the 1940s, once again condemning formal typological constructs precisely because they had been made to serve the archaeologists’ own purposes.

The successive changes of direction and of interest that have taken place since 1940 have resulted in far more theoretical and programmatic literature than actual, in-use classifications. The concern of most authors has been to propose new methods of classification rather than to develop actual classifications based on those methods. Insofar as the new methods have been put to practical use, it has been almost entirely at the level of individual assemblages. There has been, as a result, a proliferation of ad hoc classifications, each archaeologist developing his or her own system as a way of dealing with, and publishing, his or her own finds. For the most part, these individual systems have not proved capable of generative use and have not passed into what might be called the public domain. The archaeological type concepts and typological systems that remain in general, region-wide use are still very largely those that were developed, chiefly for the instrumentalist purpose of culture classification, more than half a century ago.

Other Archaeological Classifications

Although the vast majority of archaeological classifications are concerned either with cultures or with artifacts, there are also classifications