uniformitarianism

uniformitarianism [Th].
A proposition, developed by James Hutton in the late 18th century and elaborated by Sir Charles Lyell in the early 19th century, which states that processes observed happening today can reasonably be assumed to have happened in a comparable way in the past too. Initially applied in the field of geology to show that geological deposits were laid down as part of a continuous and uniform process over a long period of time rather than as the result of a series of catastrophes, the same principle can to some extent be used to underpin experimental attempts to understand the formation of archaeological deposits such as ditch fills or the decay of stone cairns.