Isochrestism and style: A clarification

Abstract

The literature of style and ethnicity in archaeology exhibits growing confusion regarding the meaning of the term isochrestism introduced by Sackett. Its original, and correct, usage concerns the notion that ethnic style is a latent quality that potentially resides in all formal variation in material culture, including varition regarded as purely functional in the utilitarian sense. Progressively, however, the term has become wrongly identified with Sackett's more general argument regarding style, which concerns as much the issue of its behavioral background as the issue of where it resides. Here the distinction between isochrestism and Sackett's broader position is clarified and both in turn are brought into relation with the major questions currently being debated by students of ethnic style.