Predicting the Future State of the World Using Archaeological Data: An Exercise in Archaeomancy

The authors used data coded on all 289 cases in the Outline of Archaeological Traditions, a sampling universe developed by the Human Relations Area Files for comparative archaeological research, to predict future values of political integration. The authors found that political integration has increased during the past 12,000 years following a quadratic curve. Although there are potential methodological and theoretical problems with the analyses, the authors suggest that using the quadratic model to predict future values of political integration is reasonable. The authors conclude that a world state is likely to have appeared by AD 5000.