Perhaps we can never fully comprehend the full complexity of the phenomenon that are being studied in Archaeology but that complexity must be accepted rather than ignored simply because it is easier to do so. "... chaotic dynamics raises entirely new, and difficult, problems for the interpretation and analysis of data. But it's better to have a clear problem, however difficult, than to live forever in a fool's paradise." (Stewart 1989, 274).

The details of chaotic dynamics cannot be modeled in prehistory because of their unpredictable nature, but the behaviour that is reflected by the material remains from each site and relationships with sites in similar space-time coordinates can be studied within the concept of chaotic dynamics. No grand unifying theory is necessity. The Complexity concept removes the need for such a theory. We are not trying to explain the data from a pre-conceived theoretical viewpoint but to understand what the data means in terms of anthropological behaviour. Complexity provides the concept within which the apparent anomalies of archaeological evidence can be accommodated. Expert systems provide an heuristic methodology by which that anthropological meaning can be understood, accepting that we are always dealing with probabilities rather than objective facts, as in quantum mechanics.

Probabilities allow for flexibility of interpretations that can change in the light of new evidence rather than "facts' that are inviolate. Archaeological interpretation itself should be seen as a dynamic system; an open system that does not attempt to reconstruct history as fact, but to understand the process of human development as probabilities that are open to continuous re-interpretation.

Science does not operate in a cultural vacuum. The kind of science we get is a reflection of the society in which it exists. The concept of the cultural independence of objective science is as outmoded as the Newtonian model of the Universe. Perhaps this juxtaposition of science and society is best illustrated by the use of symbols as suggested by Prigogine and Stengers, "Each great period of science has led to a model of nature. For classical science it was the clock; for nineteenth-century science, the period of the Industrial Revolution, it was an engine running down." For contemporary science the symbol they suggest is a sculpture of a dancing Shiva, the Hindu god of creation and destruction, as representing, "... the search for a junction between stillness and motion, time arrested and time passing" (Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 22). This symbol also suggests the assimilation of eastern philosophy into western science that Complexity represents, "Perhaps we will eventually be able to combine the Western tradition, with its emphasis on experimentation and quantitative formulations, with a tradition such as the Chinese one, with its view of a spontaneous, self-organizing world."(ibid, 22). This holistic approach within the Complexity paradigm is also seen as a reaction to what has been perceived as the de-humanization of the social sciences with the concentration on statistics and analytical techniques. Though these procedures have an important role to play, archaeology is essentially concerned with people, within an humanistic tradition.

Complexity is not being offered as a panacea for all our archaeological ills. It certainly offers no simple answers. But the concept of chaotic dynamics can offer a framework within which the complexity of archaeological data need not be ignored. Complexity places the emphasis on the dynamics of human development, which is the origin of change, rather than the stasis of assumed regularities.