Posing Questions for a Scientific Archaeology

Focuses on the interplay between theory, methods, and the generation of data from the archaeological record in pursuit of scientific explanations for historical change.

This study focuses upon the interplay between theory, methods, and the generation of data from the archaeological record in pursuit of scientific explanations for historical change. It offers directions for building theoretically defensible results through exemplar case studies.

Although many believe that archaeological knowledge consists simply of empirical findings, this notion is false; data are generated with the guidance of theory, or some sense-making system acting in its place whether researchers recognize this or not. Failure to understand the relationship between theory and the empirical world has led to the many debates and frustrations of contemporary archaeology.

Despite years of trying, the atheoretical, empiricist foundations of archaeology have left us little but a history of storytelling and unsatisfying generalizations about historical change and human diversity. The present work offers promising directions for building theoretically defensible results by providing well-designed case studies that can be used as guides or exemplars. Evolutionary theory, in at least some form, is the foundation for a scientific archaeology that will yield scientific explanations for historical change.