Abstract

Three major trends in archaeology: traditional, processual and postprocessual, conceptualize the change differently.The first one formulates the change generally in the category of evolution and partly of history, as taking place in accordancewith general laws and the phenomenon of diffusion. Another trend, processual archaeology, explains the change interms of adaptive processes, and the postprocessual trend recognizes it as history of creative activities of individuals. In thepaper, I present analytical ways of approach to cultural and social variability in archaeology, which, in fact, lead to changeof identity. They are proposals of interpretation of the changes as: a) the change of utility, b) the variability of the use ofobjects, c) the change in the way of “consumption”, as a result of the pursuit of prestige.