12. Change, individuality and reason, or how Archaeology has legitimized a patriarchal modernity. Almudena Hernando. INTRODUCTION The universe far exceeds the grasp of human understanding. Full awareness of its daunting complexity would probably drive humans to feelings of impotence and existential anxiety that might jeopardize their ability to survive (Giddens 1991: 43; Freud 1974: 395). And yet, regardless of their level of technological development, no human group has ever felt completely powerless in the face of nature - perhaps in part because none has ever apprehended the true vastness of natural phenomena in their entirety. Through various mechanisms, humans tend to fashion for themselves images of the world tailored to their own measure, and adapted to what they believe they can control. Those mechanisms shape their identity, their personhood, which is always anchored to the kind of world they believe they inhabit. In other words: the nature of personhood and the experience of reality are dictated to a great extent by people’s degree of control over their material surroundings. Their insignificance in the universe is potentially so terrifying, however, that in order to feel ontologically secure humans must constantly mobilise all kinds of strategies to reaffirm their confidence in their own strength, and in their ability to survive. The relation between two of such strategies and archaeology is the subject of this paper 1 . These strategies are discourses on origin and group bonding. 1) Discourses on origin. For each human group, beliefs about their own origin usually hold the key to the superiority they feel over other groups, the assuredness that they alone have developed the way of life that guarantees survival, and may therefore regard themselves to be the true elect, ‘chosen above all the other nations of men’. Discourses on origin fall within two categories: mythological on the one hand, and historical-archaeological on the other. Mythological discourses equate survival with stasis, lack of change, the protection afforded by sacred agencies, and emotional bonds within the group. 1 For a full development of the arguments of this text, see Hernando (2012).