METAMORPHOLOGY: IN LIEU OF UNIFORMITARIANISM

Summary Since the advent of the discipline of archaeology, its underlying theory has been a particular brand of uniformitarianism: the idea that existing forces and patterns have applied uniformly in the past. This paper proposes the introduction of an alternative unified theory, one that lends itself to falsification and logical quantification. Metamorphology is explained by first reviewing the principles of taphonomic logic, and by then extrapolating them to illuminate the entire gap between the reality of what happened in prehistory, and the record of these events as they are perceived and interpreted by the individual archaeologist. Metamorphology is defined as a refutable, logic‐based theoretical framework that is derived essentially from taphonomic logic. This paper considers some of the relevant theoretical issues.