Culture and Material Culture: Papers from the First Theoretical Seminar of the Baltic Archaeologists (BASE) Held at the University of Tartu, Estonia, October 17th-19th, 2003

The Baltic Archaeological Seminar (BASE) was devised to be an international medium for Baltic archaeologists, who could come together and discuss the main current problems in the Baltic archaeologies.
The leading theoretical question of the first seminar was how to interpret material culture - a problem that all archaeologists must deal with from the very beginning of their scientific research. The interpretation of the material culture of the past is indeed one of the central problems in archaeology. Since the development of archaeology as a science, the majority of research has concentrated on typology, chronology and chorology, and the dating of material objects. These subjects of research are definitely necessary, but should not be the final goal of archaeology.