Abstract

ldquo;Archaeology has revolutionized the study of history. It has broadened the horizons almost as much as the telescope did for the vision of astronomy in space; just as the microscope revealed to biology that under the form of large organisms is hidden the life of infinitesimal cells. Finally it has modified historic study in the same manner that radioactivity altered chemistry.”V. Gordon Childe,Progress and Archaeology,London, 1945, p. 2.Fifteen years ago, at the XII International Congress of Historic Sciences (Vienna, 1965), when historians finally decided to address the problem of “acculturation” (a concept and term first formulated and defined by sociologists), their reaction, with few exceptions, proved to be rather hesitant.