Frontiers, Boundaries, and Open Social Systems

Publisher Summary Anthropologists are aware that the bounding of human behavior can be artificial and can lead to closed conceptions of culture. In archaeology, this boundary problem involves the definitions of types and patterns: artifact types and settlement patterns, for example, rest upon theoretical and empirical considerations concerning behavior, material culture, and their expression in the archaeological record. The problem in anthropology and archaeology has been regarding the overcoming of the inability to examine open social process within the limitations of closed analytic models. A general problem for archaeologists has been regarding whether to begin study by modeling process or by identifying pattern. The archaeologist's general inability to directly observe the human activities that produce the archaeological record has led in the past to a reliance on pattern recognition as the first stage of archaeological interpretation. This chapter discusses pattern and process in archaeology. The notion of culture as an open system is amply supported in the anthropological literature. A combination of theoretical discussion and empirical studies indicate that social systems at all levels of complexity are more open and flexible than they are often considered in archaeological and ethnographic models. The chapter discusses the notion of open social systems, and frontiers and boundaries as foci for open system research.