Humanities & Social Sciences 4 (2015 8) 639-648 ~ ~ ~ УДК 904 Sign, Type, Artifact Aleksei V. Teten’kin* Irkutsk National Research Technical University 83 Lermontova Str., Irkutsk, 664074, Russia Received 22.10.2014, received in revised form 16.11.2014, accepted 20.01.2015 The paper discusses “type” as the main category in archaeology in the framework of human activity’s approach as a sign. <...> Author delineates the stages of sintagmatic constructing and paradigmatisation of the ideal type consisting of ideal image, language term and signs of the usage of type in different human activity-related situations. <...> The aspects of the production of new types from old ones are considered, as well as actualization of types by getting new artifacts and recognizing the types including the situations of the archaeological understanding. <...> Keywords: type, artifact, symbol, activity meanings, ideal type, formation of a type, understanding of a type. <...> One of the central notions in archeology is “type” (Klein, 2004). <...> Signifi cant focused on the problems the type and theoretical efforts were of typology (Gorodtsov 1927; Klein, 1978; 1991). <...> On the stage of refl ecting the formation of archeology as a special science with its own object, subject, methods and concepts the classic triad of concepts “sign – type – archaeological culture” underwent the most intense debates and developments. <...> This topic is developed in most detail in the works by L.S. Klein (Klein, 1978, 1991, 2004 et al.), which have become classics of Russian theoretical archeology, nevertheless, they have not transformed into methodological basis for constructing scientifi c knowledge for most Russian archeologists. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: altet@list.ru # 639 # archeologists, involvement in specifi c tasks of fi eld archeology. <...> On the other hand, the concept proposed by L.S. Klein (Klein, 1991) was based on the assessment of the basic concepts of the triad “sign – type – archaeological culture” considered as insuffi cient, small to science, and as a result it has the form of a quite expanded, if not cumbersome, classifi cation organized by the taxonomic principle, very diffi cult to perceive for the majority of archaeologists. <...> The popular position of strict division of different spheres of knowledge between different disciplines also had some infl <...>