Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology [Hardback]

"How do archaeologists work with the data they identify as a record of the cultural past? How are these data collected and construed as evidence? What is the impact on archaeological practice of new techniques of data recovery and analysis, especially those imported from the sciences? To answer these questions, the authors identify close-to-the-ground principles of best practice based on an analysis of examples of evidential reasoning in archaeology that are widely regarded as successful, contested, or instructive failures. They look at how archaeologists put old evidence to work in pursuit of new interpretations, how they construct provisional foundations for inquiry as they go, and how they navigate the multidisciplinary ties that make archaeology a productive intellectual trading zone. This case-based approach is predicated on a conviction that archaeological practice is a repository of considerable methodological wisdom, embodied in tacit norms and skilled expertise--wisdom that is rarely made explicit except when contested, and is often obscured when questions about the status and reach of archaeological evidence figure in high-profile crisis debates"--

A case-based exploration of norms of evidential reasoning embodied in archaeological practice.

Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology addresses a series of questions: how do archaeologists actually work with the forms of data they identify as a record of the cultural past ; how are these data collected and how are they construed as evidence ; what is the impact on archaeological practice of new techniques of data recovery and analysis (especially those that originate in the physical and life sciences)?; how do archaeologists work with old evidence in pursuit of new interpretations, and how do they adjudicate conflicting evidential claims based on the same or overlapping bodies of data?

To answer these questions the authors identify key examples of evidential reasoning in archaeology that are widely regarded as successful, as pivotal to the development of the field, or as instructive failures, and build nuanced analyses of the forms of reasoning exemplified by these cases. This case-based approach is predicated on a conviction that archaeological practice is a repository of considerable methodological wisdom, embodied in tacit norms and skilled expertise; it is rarely made explicit, except when contested, and has been largely obscured by the abstractions of high profile crisis debates.Evidential Reasoning in Archaeology captures this wisdom in a set of close-to-ground principles of best practice.