Conkey-Tringham (SAA 1988) European Theoretical/Social Archaeology: studies in ambiguity

Perhaps no one regional archaeology has been as impacted by the "return of grand theory in the human sciences" as European prehistory, where discussions and publications of the past 8-10 years have focused more on debating social theories than on the discovery of new "finds" or the manipulation of new techniques.There are many tantalizing questions as to why social (in the broadest sense of the word) interpretations are now more tolerated and encouraged in European prehistory - at least from the Neolithic on. Is it more acceptable and plausible that the ancestors of the European researchers themselves had social lives of some significance? Or--although we don't agree-- many might argue that it has "merely" been that there has has been more research carried out in Europe, as if there might be a justifiable evolution from tackling questions of chronology to questions of technology and economics to investigating the relatively unknowable: the social and symbolic domains of life