Systems theory
Archaeologist Kent Flannery described the application of systems theory to archaeology in his paper "Archaeological Systems Theory and Early Mesoamerica". Systems theory allowed archaeologists to treat the archaeological record in a completely new way. No longer did it matter what was being looked at, because it was being broken down to its elemental system components. Culture may be subjective, but unless the model of systems theory is attacked in general and as long as it is treated mathematically the same way a retreating glacier is treated, the results were objective. In other words, the problem of cultural bias no longer had any meaning, unless it was a problem with systems theory itself. Culture was now just another natural system that could be explained in mathematical terms.