Recent theoretical and methodological developments within anthropological archaeology have transformed the discipline in such a way that archaeology is now beginning to make contributions to a number of areas of social science. Two of the more significant of these areas are the question of socioeconomic change over long time spans and the study of past economic systems. The former contribution arises out of the stratigraphie character of the archaeological record and the development of increasingly accurate methods of measuring past time. Archaeological studies typically deal with change over periods of time equivalent to or even longer than Braudel’s (1980) “longue durée” (e.g., Sanders, Parsons, and Santley, 1979; Blanton et al., 1981), and many archaeologists see this diachronic social perspective as the primary contribution of archaeology to social science knowledge (Plog, 1973). The second major contribution of archaeology—the study of past economic systems—is made possible by archaeologists’ reliance upon material culture. Beyond the obvious link between material objects and the study of ancient technology, material culture can be quite revealing about many types of economic activities as well as other sociocultural phenomena (e.g., Gould and Schiffer, 1981). This focus on material objects is so crucial to archaeologists that some have suggested that the major social science contribution of the field is its concern with the relationship between behavior and material culture in modern as well as ancient societies (e.g., Rathje and Schiffer, 1982; Rathje, 1979).

It has become clear that the onset of widowhood, perhaps more than any other event of the aging process, involves a dramatic change in the family status of older persons. Because many elderly are neither emotionally nor economically prepared for widowhood, the death of a spouse often requires a realignment of social and familial relationships, economic conditions, and living arrangements. The ability to cope with hardships associated with loss of spouse certainly may be enhanced or limited by living arrangements. Not only does the type of household indicate the individual’s sociodemographic status, it also gives us insight into the individual’s family life in old age. Widowhood may initiate the final stage of the family cycle when the widowed person, as the only household survivor, must either change residence or live alone. In either case, a reordering of kinship links or provision for formal assistance may be necessary.

Political Conflict Over the past decade has brought about considerable scholarly attention to public attitudes regarding the rights of women. Some scholars have reexamined the suffrage movement during the progressive era to discover links with such recent developments as the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (McDonagh and Price, 1985).

One million fewer American farms had telephones in 1940 than in 1920; the instrument was disconnected in at least a third of the farm homes that once had it. Knowing how and why this “devolution” (Mattingly and Aspbury, 1985) occurred can expand our understanding of the social role of technology, diffusion of innovation, and more generally, twentieth-century modernization in America.

The idea of forming a new scholarly association has been generated in the lonely study of scholars hungry for supportive contact, in the interaction of kindred seekers in convention bars or bull sessions, and no doubt, in many other kinds of circumstances. The Social Science History Association began as an exercise in transmogrification, and although, in retrospect, its origin may appear to have been an act of secession, it was not intended as such. Institutional manifestation of what came to be called the “New Political History” was apparent as early as 1957 when a small group of historians interested in the political history of the American early national period met at Rutgers under the sponsorship of the Social Science Research Council to discuss the methodology of political history. The draft report of that conference, prepared by Richard P. McCormick (1957), rather accurately forecast significant developments during the next decade.

The Question Of the relative efficiency of agricultural production within the institutional framework of slavery flared in the 1970s. Fogel and Engerman (1971, 1977) found antebellum Southern agriculture to have been considerably more productive than previously thought. Although this aspect of their finding became generally accepted, the controversy focused on just how efficient slave production actually was compared to Northern agriculture (David and Temin, 1974; David et al., 1976; Schaefer and Schmitz, 1979; Wright, 1979).