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Archaeologist have often, under the influence of evolutionary and neo-evolutionary ideas, described societal dynamics in linear terms. This linear description of societal dynamics neglects much of the cultural, economic and social variation in the archaeological record. Under the influence of scientific disciplines such as ecology, a need has emerged within archaeology to investigate how societies in the past changed in a cyclical manner. The idea has arisen that we not only need to look at how societies gradually progress, and over time become more complex, but also how and why they decline. In other words, what makes them sustainable. This paper aims to adopt these ideas to archaeology and investigate the application of the concept of sustainability to the study of the past. In order to do so, we first need to adopt a conceptual model for describing the structure and functioning of socio-natural systems, suitable for sustainability analysis in the past. We then need to select indicators for this model based on archaeological data. The concept of sustainability has many definitions. Applied to society, it can be defined as: “the ability of societies to maintain order and structure over time, without loss of complexity and societal well-being.” As is currently becoming apparent, societies do not exist on their own, they exist within a specific natural environment. Nature is no longer considered the static backdrop against which human evolution takes place, but instead has a dialectic relation with the societies that exist within it. Specifically, we evaluate two models for describing sustainability: firstly, the pillar model, which considers sustainability as a balancing exercise between economy, social issues and environmental considerations; secondly, the nested model, which represents society as a subsystem of the environment; economy is at the service of societal well-being, and societies can prosper within the possibilities and limits offered by the natural environment. These models will be evaluated, compared and placed against current theoretical developments, such as complexity theory, socio-ecological systems, complex adaptive systems and societal thermodynamics. The concept of sustainability has not yet been thoroughly applied to archaeology and so it remains a rather new approach. This thesis in no way sets out to completely discuss the possibilities of the concept of sustainability, but merely to introduce the concept and lay the foundations for further research. This is set about by studying the scientific literature published on the subject and combining this with archaeological case studies. There is no focus on one material category, one region or a particular time period, albeit, that the spatio-temporal context of this paper can be found in the period 1000 BCE – 1000 CE around the Mediterranean Sea. The grand narrative of this thesis is the fact that we need to accept that change is the norm in the archaeological record and we should change our models of approaching the past accordingly. Hence, there exists a need to make visible change, explain it, model it, comprehend it and make it quantifiable for comparative purposes. Only then can we truly explain the dynamics of past socio-natural systems