Historians of archaeology used to assume that archaeology was a self-evident branch of human knowledge and that its development was inevitable. The growing popularity of relativism among archaeologists has heightened their awareness that archaeology is a field of investigation, or discourse, that has evolved only recently and been anticipated only a few times in human history. It is therefore worth enquiring what kinds of conditions give rise to archaeology and what sorts of archaeology may be the first to evolve.

Some histories of archaeology have traced its origins to any interest in what modern archaeologists identify as the material remains of the human past (Schnapp 1997). Others have restricted their focus to the deliberate use of material culture to learn more about the past (Trigger 1989a). These two approaches are obviously historically related and it is possible that the former interest was a prerequisite for the development of the latter. Yet an interest in material remains of the past does not inevitably lead to the development of archaeology, which to a significant degree seems to grow out of interests in the past that are not primarily associated with material culture. I will therefore limit the current study to tracing the use of material culture to study the past, either for its own sake or for some assumed practical purpose.