Bachhuber/Citadel and Cemetery, 9. Metahistory and the Bronze Age in Anatolia

The book concludes in Chapter 9 with a critique of the two dominant approaches to social change: diffusionary historicism, which has had the greater influence on the Bronze Age in Anatolia, and universalist evolution, which has never secured a foothold. The interpretive framework of this study tilts towards the latter. This is because related considerations of political economy can offer more explanatory power and comprehensiveness than historicist approaches. But an evolutionary model fails to explain the largest trends in Bronze Age Anatolia, and, like historicism, it obscures the ultimate interest of this book: the social worlds of villages and citadels.