Abstract
This chapter discusses the use of material culture in diachronic anthropology. The durability of material artifacts can provide researchers with a crucial temporal dimension in social change research. Time series observation of social change is not a common feature of anthropological literature on social change, but a clear understanding of social change requires observation at various points in time. However, much social change research in anthropology fails to provide the basic diachronic information necessary for even the initial description of change. Typical anthropological data are collected in a 1–2 years field session, but this provides only an extremely shallow temporal dimension from which to describe and understand change. Anthropologists have frequently tried other methods such as generational studies, restudies, and longitudinal field studies, but none of these methodologies is satisfactory for efficient diachronic analysis or to obtain diachronic records.
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