MODELLING AND AUSTRALIAN PREHISTORY

This paper discusses the impact of scientific empiricism on Australian archaeology over the last thirty years. An assessment is made about the extent to which approaches to modelling conform to the methodologies espoused by the scientific empiricists. This is done by examining 105 case studies, published by Australian researchers between 1960 and 1989. The results show that there has been increasing concern with explicit modelling, as demanded by positivist descriptions of the scientific process. An increasing concern with the explanation of cultural processes, as discussed by the 'New Archaeology ' is also evident. Other methods that are characteristic of scientific empiricism also become entities, such as hypotheses, to guide research, reliance on deduction, the use of laws and the systematic testing of hypotheses. O'Meara (1989:354) defines as a basic aim of scientific empiricism: the systematic description and classification of objects, events, and processes, and the explanation of those events and processes by theories that employ lawful regularities, all of the descriptive and explanatory statements employed being testable against publicly observable data. This overall approach has been postulated in archaeology by a number of scholars for thirty years or so. Advocates of scientific empiricism do not by any means form a unified group. Positions range from extremist (e.g. Watson et al. 1971) to more moderat